LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



ODOlSlflHfl'n 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelffcl J 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



tfR a87 




REV. HENRY WARD BEECHEK. 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH 



AND ITS PASTOE, 



OR 



HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS ACCUSERS. 



" Give me good proofs of what you have alleged : 
"Tis not. enough to say— in such a bush 
There lies a thief— in such a cave a beast,— 
Hut you must show him to me ere I shoot, 
Else I may kill one of my straggling sheep; 
I'm fond of no man's person but his virtue." 

Crown's 1st. Pakt op Henry VI. 



J 



COMPILED BY 

J. E. F>. DOYLE, 




HARTFORD, CONN. : 

THE PARK PUBLISHING COMPANY. 

1874. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by the 

PARK PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



It was not without many misgivings that the undersigned 
accepted a commission from the publisher to prepare a history 
of the great religious scandal that for so many months has ex- 
cited a nation, caused Christians to blush for the cause of re- 
ligion, and unbelievers to scoff and rejoice that the light of the 
most brilliant star in the pulpit firmament was likely to be ex- 
tinguished, and his usefulness terminated for all time. The 
compilation of a work of this magnitude under ordinary cir- 
cumstances would be a perplexing and thankless task, but when 
the reputations of two of the first men of the country, and a 
modest, christian wife and mother are involved, the task be- 
comes more difficult and painful. It is more so in a case like 
this where no competent tribunal has been organized to com- 
pel witnesses to testify under oath, that all the facts may be 
elicited. In the compilation of the work, the undersigned has 
endeavored conscientiously to present the case as fairly as pos- 
sible for all the parties to the unfortunate difficulty. Care has 
been taken to exclude all matter irrelevant to the issue, except 
such as may be calculated to preserve the thread of the narra- 
tive. Another difficulty — and, perhaps, the most stupendous 
of all — was to avoid all disgusting details likely to shock tho 
refined sensibilities of the reader. In this particular the com- 
piler may have partially failed. His apology is that had he 
shorn the testimony and documents of all these objectionable 
passages the reader would be unable to understand the charac- 



VI PREFACE. 

ter of the offences charged. Yet he recollects that the religi- 
ous as well as the secular press have opened their columns for 
the admission of the deplorable story, and that in an inter- 
view with a representative, of a Chicago journal, Eev. Dr, 
Beecher, of that city, is credited with the use of more indeli- 
cate language than any that will be found in this compilation 
-^language that the undersigned has carefully refrained from 
reproducing. With no bias in the matter, and unacquainted 
with the parties to the scandal, the undersigned does not 
desire to express any individual opinion as to the guilt or in- 
nocence of the distinguished Pastor of Plymouth Church ; and 
should time vindicate him no one will rejoice more than he 
will. Whether or not that vindication ever comes, the Ameri- 
can people can never forget the great services Mr. Beecher has 
rendered his country and they will ever retain for him the same 
feelings of affection and love that his congregation does in this 
hour of trial. In the compilation of the biographies the un- 
dersigned has availed himself of extracts from a work by Mr. 
Leon Oliver, published in Chicago, to whom he presents his 
acknowledgments. J. E. P. Doyle. 

New York, August, 1874* 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Original charges made by Mrs. Victoria Woodhull — How Mr. Beech- 
er's Secret came into Her Possession through Mrs. PaulinaWright Davis 
— Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Beecher's own Sister mixed up in the Scan- 
dal as circulators of it — The Scene in Mr. Tilton's House when he 
discovered his Wife's Infidelity, as Woodhull alleges Tilton described 
it to her 13 

CHAPTER II. 
"The Republic Threatened — The Beecher Tilton Scandal and the Beech- 
er-Bowen-Comstock Conspiracy — The Seal broken at Last — Woodhull's 
" lies " and Theodore Tilton's " True Story "—The Account Horrible at 
Best— "No Obscenity" but God's Naked Truth— The Thunderbolt 
shatters a bad crowd and ploughs the whole ground." 46 

CHAPTER III. 
Trenchant Review of the " True Story " and Mr. Clark's errors by the 
Woodhull — The Poem " Sir Marmaduke's Musings," which, it is al- 
leged is intended to refer to Theodore — How it was written in Boston, 
when Tilton had discovered his wife's fall, with a pistol before him, 
and preparatory to committing suicide — Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis' 
Letter — " The more I think of this mass of Beecher corruption the 
more I desire its opening." 78 

CHAP P ER IV. 
Developments during the Summer and Fall of 1873 — Plymouth Church 
charges Mr. Tilton with slandering Mr. Beecher. — Mr. Tilton's defence 
summarized — The action of the Church — Mr. Beecher's declaration that 
he had no complaint to make against Mr. Tilton — Action of the sister 
churches through Rev. Dr's. Storrs and Budington — The correspond- 
ence between them and Mr. Beecher — That led to the assembling of 

the Congregational Council 113 

5 



VI ' CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

The assembling of the Council of Congregational Churches — The in- 
vitation to Plymouth Church to explain its action in dropping Mr. Til- 
ton's name from the rolls — The Declaration of Plymouth church of its 
independence — The verdict of the council and a review by Rev. Dr. 

Bacon 127 

CHAPTER VI. 

Mr. Tilton's celebrated reply to Dr. Bacon's criticisms — His declara- 
tion that owing to the efforts made by Mr. Beecher's friend- to crush 
him he felt called upon to show that he was not " the creature of Mr. 
Beecher's magnanimity "—The letter of Beecher asking Theodore Til- 
ton's forgivness — " I humble myself before him as I would before my 
God " — The offense committed by Beecher against Tilton which Theo- 
dore forbears to name — Tilton spurns a proposition from Beecher's 
friends to pay his expenses if he will retreat to Europe with his 
family „ 153 

CHAPTER VII. 

A scathing review of Tilton's, Beecher's and Woodhull's pernicious 
doctrines from the pen of Professor V. B. Denslow — " The record of 
the Three Reformers the out-croppings of uncleanliness " — Tilton's 
biography of that unblushing Apostle, of prostitution " severely crit- 
icised — Tilton's ambition and his martyrdom — His analyzation of 
Beecher's character — Henry Ward is a voluptuary and very selfish — 
Tilton being a" Free Lover" could very properly accept an apology 
from Beecher for invading his house, instead of resorting to the cow- 
hide or Pistol — The inner-life of Plymouth Church 173 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A Graphic description of Mr. Beecher's first church and reminiscences of 
his congregation at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and his labors among the 
colored people of the Cincinnati suburbs — His marriage to the ambi- 
tious Eunice Leighton of Hill Farm — Mrs. Beecher's book "From Dawn 
to Daylight " and the mysterious Ventilation of the Church records — 
Departure of the Beechers from Lawrenceburg in a buggy — His career 
in Indianapolis, and how he played the role of Joseph in resisting the 
advances of the fair Mrs. Potophars of his congregation — A Romance 
of Theodore — How he secured Beecher's Love — In the role of a gover- 
nor of a State — " Walking on stilts with his face Heavenward 187 

CHAPTER IX. 

A visit to the Clafiin Woodhull sisters' Banking Office — A running com- 
mentary upon Theodore Tilton, who loves Scotch Ale as he once loved 



CONTENTS. Til 

the modern Demosthenes — a spicy interview with Victoria Woodhull 
Her relations to Tilton andBeecher explained — "Theodore was my de- 
voted lover." 211 

CHAPTER X. 
Tilton's Life of Woodhull, with cutting comments by a friend of H. W. 
Beecher — The priestess of love and unlimited affection, and the varying 
phases of the phantasmagoric career fondly photographed — On the 
housetop conversing with Demosthenes — Her Revelations to Theodore 
— Her return from the West to vindicate her biographer — An inter- 
view and denial of Mr. Tilton's irregularities " at her house — The 
moment that she first learned of Mr. Beecher's liaison from his sister 
and Mrs. Stanton 220 

CHAPTER XI. 
The long-looked-for blow falls at last upon the Pastor — The astounding 
charges of Mr. Tilton — Oft and repeated acts of " criminal commerce" 
between Mrs. Tilton and her pastor — Mr. Beecher charged with " nest 
hiding " — A sad tale of domestic infelicity, a devoted woman's love 
religious zeal, Platonic affection for her pastor, etc. — Her confession to 
her husband — How Mr. Beecher wrung a retraction from her to save 
an exposure 254 

CHAPTER XII. 

Alleged cross-examination of Mr. Tilton and his denial of the words put 
into his mouth — Henry Ward Beecher's defense — His relations to Mrs. 
Tilton only such as could be entertained by a pure minded woman, 
but he did cause a social catastrophe — Mrs. Tilton's sweeping denial — 
Her own graphic story of her domestic trouble and her affection for 
her pastor — Mr. Tilton interviewed — His threat to draw a two-edged 
sword and his offer to go into court, either a3 plaintiff or defendant — 
General Butler's advice and a significant Herald editorial — More dis- 
gusting charges by Mr. James McDermott in an interview with a re- 
porter 280 

CHAPTER XITI. 
Theodore on the Rack of Cross Examination — He adheres to his stories 
of Criminal Commerce and describes '• The Ankle Scene" "The Bed- 
room Meeting," etc — A peculiarly bad Memory — He Gives Mr. Beecher 
the " Benefit of the Doubt." — " Mutual Friend " Moulton and a History 
of Elizabeth's Confessions — Dramatic Denials, Fierce Threats and 
Defiance 299 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

A Week of Intense Excitement — The "Women Suffrage Ravens gather 
about — Mrs. Stanton declares that Mr. Tilton Admitted lo her that Mr. 
Beecher had Seduced Mrs. Tilton and that the sin was Confessed by 
Mrs. Tilton to Susan B. Anthony — Col. Anthony Asserts that his sister 
told him the same story — Miss Anthony will neither admit nor deny 

v the Allegations — Startling Statements by Mr. Carpenter — The case in 
the Court at last 350 

CHAPTER XV. 

Mrs Tilton's Cross-Examination — Her Desperate efforts to clear the Char- 
acter of the Accused Pastor — A Highly Seasoned Picture of Domestic 
Infelicity and brutal treatment of Elizabeth by Theodore — " Our 
Mutual Friend " Moulton has a sharp Correspondence with Henry Ward, 
and finally agrees to make a clean breast of all he knows — Tilton in- 
structs his Counsel to begin an action of damages against Mr. Beecher 
for the Seduction of his Wife 375 

CHAPTER XVI. 

History of Plymouth Church — Particulars of its early organization — 
Some statistics of its income — Exciting events connected with Mr. 
Beecher's pastorate, and the distinguished persons who have appeared 
in the edifice 397 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Something about the Beecher family — Dr. Lyman Beecher — Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, and other members of the family who have achieved 
reputation in religion and letters 404 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

A brief sketch of Henry Ward Beecher — His schoolboy days — Preach- 
ing to Negroes — His early ministerial labors in the West — Something 
about his theological views — Personal appearance and anecdotes of 
the man 407 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Sketch of Theodore Tilton — His career as a Reporter, Editor, Lecturer, 
Novelist and Poet — His personal appearance — His devoted admiration 
of the fair sex — A man whose Adonis-like appearance would carry the 
citadel of any susceptible heart— Mr. Samuel Bowies' sketch of him.. . 419 



CONTENTS. IX 



CHAPTER XX. 



Sketch of Mrs. Theodore Tilton nee Eiizabeth Richards — Her deeply- 
religious turn of mind — The delicate compliments paid her by the hus- 
band who charges her with a great sin 425 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Sketch of Mrs. Victoria Clafiin Woodhull — Her personal appearance — 
A glance at her peculiar social theories — A dangerous antagonist, 
either in conversation or as a writer 429 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Sketch of John H. Blood— The " Brevet " husband of Victoria— What 
Mrs. Woodhull says of him 433 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Sketch of Tennie C. Clafiin — Her personal appearance — The business 
" man " of the brokerage firm — Extracts from her writings — Her 
power as a Clairvoyant, and a remarkable test of it 435 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Henry C. Bowen, his mercantile career as the senior member of the firm 
of Bowen, McNamee & Co — His career as an editor and publisher — 
The charge that he was the first person to circulate charges against 
the pastor 441 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Mr. Beecher unbosoms himself to the Committee — His very remarkable 
explanation of his relations to Tilton and his family, alleges that he was 
blackmailed by Tilton and Moulton, Denies any criminality with Mrs. 
Tilton and gives most astounding explanations of the letters confessing 
some sin in the premises 443 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
" Mutual Friend Moulton's " crushing manifesto — He tells all he knows — 
Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton had admitted to him their acts of 
adultery — Bowen's Machinations — Elizabeth's confession, retraction, 
and admission that she is incapable of uttering the truth — How 
Beecher used Moulton to cover his tracks — Isabella Beecher Hooker's 
Free Love fancies — Rev. Thos. K. Beecher sees no hope for Henry, 
and exclaims: "Hands off until he is down" — A fearful picture of 
lying, prevarication, and plotting — The blackmail story exploded — 
Plymouth Church driven into silence 479 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ORIGINAL CIIAItGES AS MADE BY MRS. WOODHULL. HOW MR. 

beeciier's SECRET CAME INTO HER POSSESSION THROUGH MRS. 

PAULINE WRIGHT DAVIS. MRS. STANTON AND MR. BEECIIER'S 

OWN SISTER MIXED UP IN THE SCANDAL AS CIRCULATORS OF IT. 

THE SCENE IN TILTON'S HOUSE WHEN HE DISCOVERED HIS 

WIFE'S INFIDELITY, AS WOODHULL ALLEGES TILTON DESCRIBED 
IT TO HER. 

t~N entering upon the duty of preparing a faithful narrative of 
-^- this great social sensation of the nineteenth century, the 
author is not unmindful of the fact that much of the informa- 
tion — in the form of published statements, letters and other 
documents, ma}' bcfound in the future to be in some particulars 
inaccurate, but as a faithful historian he proposes to give the 
entire case as nearby as possible in chronological order. Long 
before the publication of the original charges against Mr. 
Beecher in Wooclhull and Claflin's Weekly — an organ devoted 
to advance ideas of social reform and universal love — rumors 
of Mr. Beecher's " irregularities " had been circulated not only 
in the city of Brooklyn, where Plymouth Church is situate, but 
within various coteries of the women suffragists. Nobody, 
however, placed much reliance upon the " slanders," as they 
were very generally designated, until in the issue of Wooclhull 
and Claflin's Weekly, of November 2d, 1872, there were ex- 
plicit and detailed charges mq^le. The author proposes to 
copy the charges in Mrs. Woodhull's own words, the more 
especially as she signs them as an evidence of their truth and 

13 



14 WOODHULL DISCOURSES ON MATRIMONY. 

her responsibility in the matter of publication. The following 

is her statement : — 

" I propose, as the commencement of a series of aggressive 
moral warfare on the social question, to begin in this article 
with ventilating one of the most stupendous scandals which 
has ever occurred in any communit}\ I refer to that which 
has been whispered broad-cast for the last two or three } T ears 
through the cities of New York and Brooklyn, touching the 
character and conduct of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in 
his relations with the family of Theodore Tilton. I intend 
that this article shall burst like a bomb-shell into the ranks of 
the moralistic social camp. 

" I am engaged in officering, and in some sense conducting, 
a social revolution on the marriage question. I have strong 
convictions to the effect that this institution, as a bond or prom- 
ise to love another to the end of life, and forego all other loves 
or passional gratifications, has outlived its da} T of usefulness ; 
that the most intelligent and realty virtuous of our citizens, 
especially in the large cities of Christendom, have outgrown it ; 
are constantly and sj'stematically unfaithful to it ; despise and 
revolt against it, as a slavey, in their hearts ; and only submit 
to the semblance of fidelity to it from the dread of a sham 
public opinion, based on the ideas of the past, and which no 
longer really represent the convictions of anybocty'. The doc- 
trines of scientific socialism have profoundly penetrated and 
permeated public opinion. No thought has so rapidly and 
completely carried the convictions of the thinking portions of 
the community as stirpiculture. The absurdity is too palpable, 
when it is pointed out, that we give a hundred times more 
attention to the laws of breeding as applied to horses and 
cattle and pigs, and even to our barn-yard fowls, than we do to 
the same laws as applied to human beings. It is equally 
obvious, on a little reflection, that stirpiculture, or the scientific 
propagation and cultivation of the human animal, demands 
free love or freedom of the varied union of the sexes under the 
dictates of the highest and best knowledge on the subject, as 
an essential and precedent condition. These considerations 
are too palpable to be ignored, and they look to the complete 
and early supercedure of the old and traditional institution of 
marriage, by the substitution of some better system for the 
maintenance of women as mothers, and of children as progeny. 
All intelligent people know these facts and look for the coming 



SHE IS DENOUNCED FOE HER SENTIMENTS. 15 

of some wiser and better system of social life. The super- 
ceding of marriage in the near future, b} r some kind of socialistic 
arrangement, is as much a foregone conclusion with all the best 
thinkers of to-day as was the approaching dissolution of slavery 
no more than five or ten years before its actual abolition in the 
late war. 

" But, in the meantime, men and women tremble on the 
brink of the revolution and hesitate to avow their convictions, 
while yet partly aware of their rights, and urged b}' the legiti- 
mate impulses of nature, they act upon the new doctrines 
while they profess obedience to the old. In this manner an 
organized hypocrisy has become the tone of our modern society. 
Poltroonery, cowardice and deception rule the hour. The con- 
tinuance, for generations, of such utter falsit}-, touching one of 
the most sacred interests of humanity, will almost eradicate 
the sense of honesty from the human soul. Every considera- 
tion of sound expediency demands that these days be shortened ; 
that somebody lead the van in announcement of the higher 
order of life. 

" Impelled by such views, I entered the combat with old 
errors, as I believed them to be, and brought forward, in 
addition to the wise and powerful words which others have 
uttered on the subject, the arguments which my own inspiration 
and reflection suggested. No sooner had I done so than the 
howl of persecution sounded in nry ears. Instead of replying 
to my arguments, I was assaulted with shameful abuse. I was 
young and inexperienced in the business of reform, and as- 
tounded to find what, as I have since learned from the veterans 
in the cause, is the usual fact, that the most persistent and 
slanderous and foul-mouthed accusations came from precisely 
those who, as I often happened to know, stood nearest to me in 
their convictions, and whose lives, privately, were a protest 
against the very repression which I denounce. It was a para- 
dox which I could not understand, that I was denounced as 
utterly bad for affirming the right of others, to do as they did ; 
denounced b}^ the very persons whom nry doctrines could alone 
justify, and who claimed, at the same time, to be conscientious 
and good men. My position led, nevertheless, to continuous 
confidences relating to people's own opinions and lives and the 
opinions and lives of others. My mind became charged with 
a whole literature of astoishning disclosures. The lives of 
almost the whole army of spiritualistic and social reformers, of 
all the schools, were laid open before me. But the matter 



1G SITE HESITATES AS TO HER DUTY. 

did not stop there. I found that, to a great extent, the social 
resolution was as far advanced among leading lights of the 
business and wealthy circles, and of the various professions, 
not excluding the clergy and the churches, as among technical 
reformers. 

" It was, nevertheless, from these very quarters that I was 
most severely assailed. It was vexatious and trying, I confess, 
forgone of my temper, to stand under the galling fire of per- 
sonalities from parties who should have been my warmest 
advocates, or who should, else, have reformed their lives in 
accordance with a morality which they wished the public to 
understand they professed. I was sorely and repeatedly 
tempted to retort, in personalities, to these attacks. But 
simply as personality or personal defense, or spiteful retort, I 
have almost wholly abstained during these years of sharp con- 
flict from making any use of the rich resources at my command 
for that kind of attack. 

" But, in the meantime, the question came to press itself 
upon my consideration : Had I any right, having assumed the 
championship of social freedom, to forego the use of half the 
weapons which the facts no less than the philosophy of the 
subject placed at my command for conducting the war — through 
any mere tenderness to those who were virtual traitors to the 
truth which they knew and were surreptitiously acting upon ? 
Had not the sacred cause of human rights and human well- 
being a paramount claim over my own conduct? Was I not, 
in withholding the facts and conniving at a putrid mass of 
seething falsehood and Irypocrisy, in some sense a partaker in 
these crimes ; and was I not, in fact, shrinking from the respon- 
sibility of making the exposure more through regard for my 
own sensitiveness and dislike to be hurt than from anj T true 
sympathy with those who would be called upon to suffer? 

" These questions once before my mind would never be dis- 
posed of until the}^ were fairly settled upon their own merits, 
and apart, so far as I could separate them, from nry own feel- 
ings or the feelings of those who were more directly involved. 
I have come slowly, deliberately, and I may add reluctantly, 
to nry conclusions. I went back to and studied the history of 
other reforms. I found that Garrison not only denounced 
slavery in the abstract, but that he attacked it in the concrete. 
It was not only ' the sum of all villainies,' but it was the par- 
ticular villainy of this and that and the other great and influ- 
ential man, North and South, in the community. Reputations 



TO MAKE AN OMELET SOME EGGS MUST BE BROKEN. 17 

had to suffer. He bravely and persistently called things by 
their right names. He pointed out and depicted the individual 
instances of cruelty. He dragged to the light and scathed and 
stigmatized the individual offenders. He made them a hissing 
and a by-word, so far as in him lay. He shocked the public 
sensibilities by actual and vivid pictures of slaveholding atroci- 
ties, and sent spies into the enemies' camp to search out the 
instances. The world cried shame ! and said it was scandalous, 
and stopped their ears and blinded their eyes, that their own 
sensibilities might not be hurt by these horrid revelations. 
They cast the blanket of their charities and s\~mpathies around 
the real offenders for their misfortune in being brought to the 
light, and denounced the informer as a malignant and cruel 
wretch for not covering up scenes too dreadful to be thought 
upon ; as if it were not a thousand times more dreadful that 
they should be enacted. But the brave old C3 r clops ignored 
alike their criticisms, their protests, and their real and their 
mock sensibilities, and hammered away at his anvil, forging 
thunderbolts of the gods ; and nobody now sa}-s he was wrong. 
A new public opinion had to be created, and he knew that 
people had to be shocked, and that individual personal feelings 
had to be hurt. As Bismarck is reported to have said : ' If an 
omelet has to be made some eggs have to be broken.' Every 
revolution has its terrific cost, if not in blood and treasure, 
then still in the less tangible but alike real sentimental injury 
of thousands of sufferers. The preliminary and paramount 
question is: Ought the revolution to be made, cost what it 
may? Is the cost to humanity greater of permitting the stand- 
ing evil to exist? and if so, then let the cost be incurred, fall 
where it must. If justice to humanity demand the given ex- 
penditure, then accepting the particular enterprise of reform, 
we accept all its necessary consequences, and enter upon our 
work, fraught, it may be, with repugnance to ourselves as it is 
necessarily with repugnance to others. 

" I have said that I came slowly, deliberately and reluctantly 
to the adoption of this method of warfare. I was also hindered 
and delayed by the fact that if I entered upon it at all I saw 
no way to avoid making the first onslaught in the most dis- 
tinguished quarters. It would be cowardice in me to unearth 
the peccadillos of little men, and to leave untouched the dere- 
lictions and offences of the magnates of social and intellectual 
power and position. How slowly I have moved in this matter, 
and how reluctantly it may be inferred, will appear from these 
little points of history. 



1 8 SHE P UBLISHED A CARD IN TEE TIMES AND WORLD. 

" More than two years ago these two cities — New York and 
Brooklyn — were rife with rumors of an awful scandal in Ply- 
mouth Church. These rumors were whispered and covertly 
alluded to in almost every circle. But the very enormity of 
the facts, as the world views such matters, hushed the agitation 
and prevented exposure. The press, warned by the laws of 
libel, and by a tacit and in the main honorable consensus to 
ignore all such rumors until they enter the courts, or become 
otherwise matters of irrepressible notoriety, abstained from 
any direct notice of the subject, and the rumors themselves 
were finally stifled or forgotten. A few persons only knew 
something directly of the facts, but among them, situated as I 
was, I happened to be one. Already the question pressed on 
me whether I ought not to use the event to forward the cause 
of social freedom, but I only saw clear in the matter to the 
limited extent of throwing out some feelers to the public on the 
subject. It was often a matter of long and anxious consulta- 
tion between me and my cabinet of confidential advisers. 

" In June, 1870, Woodhull and Clajlin's Weekly published 
an article in reply to Henry C. Bowen's attack on n^self in 
the columns of the Independent, the editorship of which had 
just been vacated by Theodore Tilton. In this article the 
following paragraph occurred : ' At this very moment awful 
and herculean efforts are being made in a neighboring city to 
suppress the most terrific scandal which has ever astonished 
and convulsed ai^ community. Clergy, congregation and 
community will be alike hurled into more than all the consterna- 
tion which the great explosion in Paris carried to that 
unfortunate city, if this effort at suppression fail.' 

" Subsequently I published a letter in both World and Times, 
in which was the following sentence : ' I know a clergyman 
of eminence in Brooklyn who lives in concubinage with the 
wife of another clergyman of equal eminence.' 

" It was generally and well understood among the people of 
the press especially, that both of these references were to this 
case of Mr. Beecher's, and it came to be generally suspected 
that I was better informed regarding the facts of the case than 
others, and was reserving publicity of my knowledge for a 
more convenient season. This suspicion was heightened 
nearly into conviction when it transpired that Theodore Til- 
ton was an earnest and apparently conscientious advocate of 
many of my radical theories, as appeared in his far-famed 
biography of me, and in numerous other publications in the 



MERITS OF THE IMPENDING EXPOSE!. 19 

Golden Age and elsewhere. Mr. Tilton's warmest friends 
were shocked at his course, and when he added to his remarka- 
ble proceedings, his brilliant advocac}^ of my Fourteenth 
Amendment theoiy, in his letters to Horace Greeley, Chas. 
Sumner and Mat. Carpenter, they considered him irremedia- 
bly committed to the most radical of all radicals. Assurance 
was made doubly sure when he presided at Steinway Hall, 
when I, for the first time, fully and boldly advanced my free- 
love doctrines. It was noted, however, that this man who 
stood before the world so fully committed to the broadest 
principles of liberty, made it convenient to be conspicuously 
absent from the convention of the Women Suffragists at 
Washington last January. All sorts of rumors were there- 
upon rife. Some said he had ' gone back ' on his advocacy of 
free-love ; some said that a rupture had taken place between 
him and the leaders of the suffrage movement, and maivy were 
the theories brought forward to explain the facts. But the 
real cause did not transpire until Mr. Tilton was found at 
Cincinnati urging as a candidate the very man whom he had 
recentlv so severe^ castigated with his most caustic pen. It 
was then wisely surmised that political ambition, and the 
editorial chair of the Tribune, and his life-long personal de- 
votion to Mr. Greeley, were the inducements which had 
sufficed to turn his head and heart away, temporarily at least, 
from our movement. 

" About this time rumors floated out that Mrs. Woodhull, 
disgusted at the recent conduct of Mr. Tilton and the advice 
given him by certain of his friends, was animadverting in not 
very measured terms upon their conduct. An article specify- 
ing matters involving several of these persons, obtained con- 
siderable circulation, and with other circumstances, such as the 
definite statement of facts, with names and places, indicated 
that the time was at hand, nigh even unto the door, when the 
things that had remained hidden, should be brought to light, 
and the whole affair made public. 

" Some time in August last there appeared in the Evening 
Telegram a paragraph which hinted broadly at the nature of 
the impending expose. About this time, a gentleman from 
abroad, to whom I had related some of the facts in 1113' posses- 
sion, repeated them to a member of Mr. Beecher's church, who 
denounced the whole story as an infamous libel ; but some 
days later he acknowledged both to his friend and me that he 
had inquired into the matter and had learned that it was 



20 "A NA TION WILL BE BORN IN A DA F." 

* a damning fact/ This gentleman occupies a responsible 
position, and his word is good for all that he utters. Such was 
the facility with which confirmations were obtained when 
sought for. When, therefore, those who were conversant with 
the case, saw in the Boston Herald and other papers that I had 
made a public statement regarding the whole matter, they were 
not in the least surprised/ It shows that the press had con- 
cluded that it was time to recognize the sensation which, 
whether they would or not, was destined soon to shake the 
social structure from its foundation. 

" A reporter was then specially detailed to interview me in 
order, as he said, that the matter might be published in certain 
of the New York papers. Why that interview has been sup- 
pressed is not possible to affirm with certainty, but it is easy to 
guess. An impecunious reporter can be bought off with a few 
hundred dollars. And there are those who would readily pay 
thousands to shut the columns of the press against this exposure. 
Fortunately I have a nearly verbatim copy of the report, as the 
interviewer prepared it, and in this shape I shall now present it 
to the public. 

" But before proceeding to the main matter, let me relate, 
more in detail, the facts which finally determined me to enter 
upon this adventurous and responsible method of agitation. 

" In September, 1871,1 was elected, at the annual convention 
at Tro3 r , President of the National Association of Spiritualists. 
I had never consociated with the Spiritualists, although for 
many years both a Spiritualist and a medium myself, with rare 
and wonderful experiences of my own from m}- childhood up. 
I went to this convention merely as a spectator, with no previous 
concert or machinery of any kind, and was myself as absolutely 
taken by surprise by my nomination and election as could have 
been any one present. It was said editorially in our paper, 
September 30, 1871, and said truly: 'Her surprise at her 
reception, and her nomination to the Presidency of the Society 
was equaled only by the gratitude which she felt, and will ever 
feel, at the unexpected and tumultuous kindness with which she 
was then and there honored beyond her desert.' 

"In Woodhull and Clajlin's Weekly, of Nov. 11, 1871, I ad- 
dressed a President's message to the American Association of 
Spiritualists. In that document I made use of these words : 
4 A new and mightier power than all the rings and caucuses, 
than all the venal legislatures and congresses, has already en- 
tered the arena. Not only are all the reform parties coalescent 



WOODUULL PRESIDENT, EQ UAL RIGHTS PARTY. 2 1 

in the reform plane, but they have already coalesced in spirit, 
under the new lead, and ' a nation will be born in a day.' They 
have already taken possession of the public conviction. Some- 
Avhat unconsciously, but really, all the people look to the com- 
ing of a new era ; but all of them are not so well aware as we 
are that the spirit world has alwa3*s exerted a great and divers- 
ified influence over this, while it is not till quite recently that 
the spiritual development of this world has made it possible for 
the other to maintain real and continuous relations with it. 

" ' Your enthusiastic acceptance of me, and your election of 
me as your President, was, in a sense, hardly } T our act. It was 
an event prepared for you and to which you were impelled by 
the superior powers to which both 3*011, and I are subject. It 
was only one step in a series of rapid and astounding events, 
which will, in a marvellously short time, change the entire face 
of the social world.' 

" This and similar to this was the complete avowal which I 
then made of my faith, in the spiritual ordering of human events, 
and especially of a grand series of events, now in actual and 
rapid progress, and tending to culminate in the complete disso- 
lution of the old social order, and in the institution of a new 
and celestial order of humanity in the world. And let me now 
take occasion to affirm, that all the, otherwise viewed, terrible 
events which I am about to recite as having occurred in Ply- 
mouth Church, are merel} r parts of the same drama which have 
been cautiously and laboriously prepared to astound men into 
the consciousness of the possibilities of a better life ; and that 
I believe that all the parties to this embroglio have been, 
throughout, the unconscious agents of the higher powers. It 
is this belief, more than anything else, which finally reconciles 
me to enact my part in the matter, which is that of the mere 
nuncia to the world of the facts which have happened, and so 
of the new step in the dissolution of the Old and in the inaugu- 
ration of the New. 

" At a large and enthusiastic National Convention of the 
reformers of all schools, held in Apollo Hall, New York, the 
11th and 12th of May, 1872, I was put in nomination as the 
candidate of the Equal Rights Party for the presidency of the 
United States. Despite the brilliant promise of appearances 
at the inception of this movement, a counter current of fatality 
seemed from that time to attend both it and me. The press, 
suddenly divided between the other two great parties, refused 
all notice of the new reformatory movement ; a series of pecun- 



22 SHE DID NOT SWEAR PROFANED Y. 

iary disasters stripped us, for the time being, of the means of 
continuing our own weekly publication, and forced us into a 
desperate struggle for mere existence. I had not even the 
means of communicating my condition to my own circle of 
friends. At the same time my health failed from mere exhaus- 
tion. The inauguration of the new party, and my nomination, 
seemed to fall dead upon the country ; and, to cap the climax, 
* a new batch of slanders and injurious innuendoes permeated 
the community in respect to my condition and character. 

Circumstances being in this state, the year rolled round, and 
the next annual convention of the National Association of Spir- 
itualists occurred in Sept., 1872, at Boston. I went there — 
dragged by the sense of duty — tired, sick and discouraged as 
to my own future, to surrender my charge as President of the 
Association, feeling as if I were distrusted and unpopular, and 
with no consolation but the consciousness of having striven to 
do right, and my abiding faith in the wisdom and help of the 
spirit world. 

" Arrived at the great assemblage, I felt around me every- 
where, not indeed a positive hostility, not even a fixed spirit 
of unfriendliness, but one of painful uncertainty and doubt. I 
listened to the speeches of others and tried to gather the senti- 
ment of the great meeting. I rose finally to my feet to render 
an account of my stewardship, to surrender the charge, and 
retire. Standing there before the audience, I was seized by 
one of those overwhelming gusts of inspiration which sometimes 
come upon me, from I know not where ; taken out of nryself ; 
hurried away from the immediate question of discussion, and 
made, by some power stronger than I, to pour out into the ears 
of that assembly, and, as I was told subsequently, in a rhapsody 
of indignant eloquence, with circumstantial detail, the whole 
history of the Beeciier and Tilton scandal in Plymouth Church, 
and to announce in prophetic terms something of the bearing 
of those events upon the future of Spiritualism. I know per- 
haps less than an}'' of those present, all that I did actually say. 
They tell me that I used some naughty words upon that occa- 
sion. All that I know is, that if I swore, I did not siv ear pro- 
fanely. Some said, with the tears streaming from their eyes, 
that I sivore divinely. That I could not have shocked or horri- 
fied the audience was shown by the fact that in the immense 
hall, packed to the ceiling, and as absolutely to my own surprise 
as at my first election at Troy, I was re-elected President of 
the Association. Still impressed by my own previous convic- 



SHE IS NOT HOSTILE TO MR. BEECUER. 23 

tions, that my labors in that connection were ended, I promptly 
declined the office. The convention, however, refused to accept 
my declinature. 

"The public press of Boston professed holy horror at the 
freedom of my speech, and restricted their reports to the nar- 
rowest limits, carefully suppressing what I had said of the 
conduct of the great clergyman. The report went forward, 
however, through various channels, in a muffled and mutilated 
form, the general conclusion being, probably, with the unin- 
formed, simply that Mrs. Wbodhull had publicly slandered Mr. 
Beecher. 

" Added, therefore, to all other considerations, I am now 
placed in the situation that I must cither endure unjustly the 
imputation of being a slanderer, or I must resume my previously 
formed purpose, and relate in formal terms, for the whole pub- 
lic, the simple facts of the case as they have come to my knowl- 
edge, and so justify, in cool deliberation, the words I uttered, 
almost unintentionally, and by a sudden impulse, at Boston. 

" I accept the situation, and enter advisedly upon the task I 
have undertaken, knowing the responsibilities of the act and its 
possible consequences. I am impelled by no hostility whatever 
to Mr. Beecher, nor by any personal pique toward him or any 
other person. I recognize in the facts a fixed determination in 
the Spirit world to bring this subject to the light of day for 
high and important uses to the world. They demand of me my 
co-operation, and they shall have it, no matter what the conse- 
quences ma3 r be to me personally. 

" The following is the re-statement from notes, aided b} r my 
recollection, of the interviewing upon this subject by the press 
reporter alread}' alluded to : 

" Reporter . — ' Mrs. Woodhtjll, I have called to ask if you 
are prepared and willing to furnish a full statement of the 
Beecher-Tilton scandal for publication in the city papers?' 

" Mrs. Wbodhull. — ' I do not know that I ought to object to 
repeating whatever I know in relation to it. You understand, 
of course, that I take a different view of such matters from 
those usually avowed by other people. Still I have good rea- 
son to think that far more people entertain views corresponding 
to mine than dare to assert them or openly live up to them.' 

" Reporter. — ' How, Mrs. Woodiiull, would you state in the 
most condensed way your opinions on this subject, as they 
differ from those avowed and ostensibly lived by the public at 
large?' 



24 BEECHER' S HYPOCRISY. 

" ifcfrs. Woodhull. — ' I believe that the marriage institution, 
like slavery and monarchy, and many other things which have 
been good or necessaiy in their day, is now effete, and in a gen- 
eral sense injurious, instead of being beneficial to the commu 
nityj although of course it must continue to linger until better 
institutions can be formed. I mean bj T marriage, in this con- 
nection, any forced ox obligatory tie between the sexes, ang legal 
intervention or constraint to prevent people from adjusting their 
love relations precisely as the} 7 do their religious affairs in this 
countiy, in complete personal freedom ; changing and improv- 
ing them from time to time, and according to circumstances.' 

" Reporter. — ' I confess, then, I cannot understand why you 
of all persons should have any fault to find with Mr. Beecher, 
even assuming everything to be true of him which I have 
hitherto heard onl} r vaguely hinted at.' 

" Mrs. Woodhull. — * /have no fault to find with him in any 
such sense as you mean, nor in any such sense as that in 
which the world will condemn him. I have no doubt that he 
has clone the very best which he could do under all the circum- 
stances — with his demanding physical nature, and with the 
terrible restrictions upon a clergyman's life, imposed by that 
ignorant public opinion about physiological laws, which the} 7 , 
nevertheless, more, perhaps, than airy other class, do their best 
to perpetuate. The fault I find with Mr. Beecher is of a 
wholly different character, as I have told him repeatedly and 
frankly, and as he knows very well. It is, indeed, the exact 
opposite to that for which the world will condemn him. I con- 
demn him because I know, and have had eveiy opportunity to 
know, that he entertains, on conviction, substantially the same 
views which I entertain on the social question ; that, under the 
influence of these convictions, he has lived for many 3-ears, 
'perhaps for his whole adult life, in a manner which the religious 
and moralistic public ostensibly, and to some extent really 
condemn ; that he has permitted himself, nevertheless, to be 
over-awed by public opinion, to profess to believe otherwise 
than as he does believe, to have helped to maintain for these 
man}' } T ears that very social slavery under which he was chafing, 
and against which he was secretly revolting both in thought 
and practice; and that he has, in a word, consented, and still 
consents to be a hypocrite. The fault villi which I, therefore, 
charge him, is not infidelity to the old ideas, but unfaithfulness 
to the new. He is in hearty in conviction and in life, an ultra 
socialist reformer ; while in seeming and pretension he is the 



SHE HEARS R UMORS. 25 

upholder of the old social slavery, and, therefore, does what he 
can to crush out and oppose me and those who act and believe 
with me in forwarding the great social revolution. I know, 
myself, so little of the sentiment of fear, I have so little respect 
for an ignorant and prejudiced public opinion, I am so accus- 
tomed to say the thing that I think and do the thing that I 
believe to be right, that I doubt not I am in danger of having 
far too little sympathy with the real difficulties of a man situ- 
ated as Mr. Beecher has been, and is, when he contemplates 
the idea of facing social opprobrium. Speaking from my feel- 
ings, I am prone to denounce him as a poltroon, a coward and a 
sneak ; not, as I tell 3 T ou, for anything that he has done, and 
for which the world would condemn him, but for failing to do 
what it seems to me so clear he ought to do ; for failing, in a 
word, to stand shoulder to shoulder with me and others who 
are endeavoring to hasten a social regeneration which he be- 
lieves in.' 

" Reporter. — ' You speak very confidently, Mrs. Woodhull, 
of Mr. Beecher's opinions and life. Will }-ou now please to 
resume that subject, and tell me exactly what you know of 
both?' 

"Mrs. Wooclhull. — 'I had vaguely heard rumors of some 
scandal in regard to Mr. Beecher, which I put aside as mere 
rumor and idle gossip of the hour, and gave to them no atten- 
tion whatever. The first serious intimation I had that there 
was something more than mere gossip in the matter came 
to me in the committee room at Washington, where the suffrage 
women congregated during the winter of 1870, when I was 
there to urge my views on the Fourteenth Amendment. It was 
hinted in the room that some of the women, Mrs. Isabella 
Beecher Hooker, a sister of Mr. Beecher, among the num- 
ber, would snub Mrs. Woodhull on account of her social 
opinions and antecedents. Instantly a gentleman, a stranger 
to me, stepped forward and said : ' It would ill become these 
women, and especially a Beecher, to talk of antecedents or to 
cast any smirch upon Mrs. Woodhull , for I am reliably assured 
that Henry Ward Beecher preaches to at least twenty of his 
* * * * every Sunday.* 

" ' I paid no special attention to the remark at the time, as I 
was very intensely engaged in the business Which had called 
me there ; but it afterward forcibly occurred to me, with the 
thought also that it was strange that such a remark, made in 
such a presence, had seemed to have a subduing effect instead 
2 



26 MRS. PA ULINA WRIGHT DA VIS. 

of arousing indignation. The women who were there could 
not have treated me better than they did. Whether this 
strange remark had any influence in overcoming their objections 
to me I do not know ; but it is certain they were not set 
against me by it ; and, all of them, Mrs. Hooker included, 
subsequently professed the warmest friendship for me.' 

" Reporter. — ' After this, I presume you sought for the so- 
lution of the gentleman's remark.' 

"Mrs. Woodhull. — ' No, I did not. It was brought up sub- 
sequently, in an intimate conversation between her and me, by 
Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, without any seeking on my part, 
and to my very great surprise. Mrs. Davis had been, it seems, 
a frequent visitor at Mr. Tilton's house in Brooklyn — they 
having long been associated in the Woman's Rights movement 
— and she stood upon certain terms of intimacy in the family. 
Almost at the same time to which I have referred, when I was 
in Washington, she called, as she told me, at Mr. Tilton's. 
Mrs. Tilton met her at the door and burst into tears, exclaim- 
ing : 'Oh, Mrs. Davis! have you come to see me? For six 
months I have been shut up from the world, and I thought no 
one ever would come again to visit me.' In the interview that 
followed, Mrs. Tilton spoke freely of a long series of intimate, 
and so-called criminal relations, on her part, with the Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher ; of the discovery of the facts by Mr. 
Tilton ; of the abuse she had suffered from him in consequence, 
and of her heart-broken condition. She seemed to allude to 
the whole thing as to something already generally known, or 
known in a considerable circle, and impossible to be concealed ; 
and attributed the long absence of Mrs. Davis from the house 
to her knowledge of the facts. She was, as she stated at the 
time, recovering from the effects of a miscarriage of a child of 
six months. The miscarriage was induced by the. ill-treatment 
of Mr. Tilton in his rage at the discovery of her criminal 
intimacy with Mr. Beecher, and, as he believed, the great 
probability, that she was enciente by Mr. Beecher instead of 
himself. Mrs. Tilton confessed to Mrs. Davis the intimacy 
with Mr. Beecher, and that it had been of }'ears' standing. 
She also said that she had loved Mr. Beecher before she 
married Mr. Tilton, and that now the burden of her sorrow 
was greatly augmented by the knowledge that Mr. Beecher 
was untrue to her. She had not only to endure the rupture 
with her husband, but also the certainty that, notwithstanding 
his repeated assurance of his faithfulness to her, he had recently 



ELIZABETH CAD Y STANTON. 27 

had illicit intercourse, under most extraordinary circumstances, 
with another person. Said Mrs. Davis : ' I came away from 
that house, my soul bowed down with grief at the heart-broken 
condition of that poor woman, and I felt that I ought not to 
leave Brooklyn until I had stripped the mask from that in- 
famous, lrypocritical scoundrel, Beecher.' In May, after 
returning home, Mrs. Davis wrote me a letter, from which I 
will read a paragraph to show that we conversed on this sub- 
ject.' 

A LETTER. 

" ' ' Dear Victoria : I thought of you half of last night, dreamed of 
you and prayed for you. 

" ' ' I believe you are raised up of God to do a wonderful work, and I 
believe that you will unmask the hypocrisy of a class that none others 
dare touch. God help you and save you. The more I think of that mass 
of Beecher corruption the more I desire its opening. 

" ' 'Ever yours, lovingly, 

Paulina Wright Davis. 

" ' « Providence, R. I., May, 1871." 

" Reporter. — ' Did }*ou inform Mrs. Davis of yoxxv intention 
to expose this matter, as she intimates in the letter ?' 

" Mrs. Woodhull. — 'I said in effect to her, that the matter 
would become public, and that I felt that I should be instru- 
mental in making it so. But I was not decided about the 
course I should pursue. I next heard the whole story from 
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton.' 

" Reporter. — ' Indeed ! Is Mrs. Stanton also mixed up in 
this affair ? Does she know the facts ? How ooirld the matter 
have been kept so long quiet when so many people are cog- 
nizant of it ? ' 

" Mrs. Woodhull. — ' The existence of the skeleton in the 
closet may be very widely known, and man}'' people may have 
the key to the terrible secret, but still hesitate to open the door 
for the great outside world to gaze in upon it. This grand 
woman did indeed know the same facts, and from Mr. Tilton 
himself. I shall never forget the occasion of her first rehearsal 
of it to me at my residence, 15 East Thirty-eighth street, in a 
visit made to me during the Apollo Hall Convention in May, 
1871. It seems that Mr. Tilton, in agony at the discovery 
of what he deemed his wife's perfidy and his pastor's treachery, 
retreated to Mrs. Stanton's residence at Tenafly, where he de- 
tailed to her the entire stoiy. Said Mrs. Stanton, ' I never 
saw such a manifestation of mental agony. He raved and tore 
his hair, and seemed upon the very verge of insanity.' ' Oh ! ' 



28 MRS. TILTON'S INFIDELITY. 

said he, ' that that damned lecherous scoundrel should have 
defiled my bed for ten years, and at the same time have pro- 
fessed to be my best friend ! Had he come like a man to me 
and- confessed his' guilt, I could perhaps have endured it, but to 
have him creep like a snake into my house leaving his pollution 
behind him, and I so blind as not to see, and esteeming him 
"all the while as a saint — oh ! it is too much. And when I think 
how for years she, upon whom I had bestowed all my heart's 
love, could have lied and deceived me so, I lose all faith in 
humanity. I do not believe there is any honor, any truth left 
in anybody in the world.' Mrs. Stanton continued and re- 
peated to me the sad story, which it is unnecessary to recite, as 
I prefer giving it as Mr. Tilton himself told it me, subse- 
quently, with his own lips.' 

" Reporter. — ' Is it possible that Mr. Tilton confided this 
story to you ? It seems too monstrous to be believed !' 

" Mrs. Woodhull. — ' He certainly did. And what is more, I 
am persuaded that in his inmost mind he will not be otherwise 
than glad when the skeleton in his closet is revealed to the 
world, if thereby the abuses which lurk like vipers under the 
cloak of social conservatism may be exposed and the causes 
removed. Mr. Tilton looks deeper into the soul of things than 
most men, and is braver than most.' 

" Reporter. — ' How did your acquaintance with Mr. Tilton 
begin ?' 

"Mrs. Woodhull. — 'Upon the information received from 
Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Stanton I based what I said in the 
Weekly, and in the letters in the Times and World, referring 
to the matter, I was nearly determined — though still not quite 
so — that what I, equally with those who gave me the informa- 
tion, believed, but for wholly other reasons, to be a most im- 
portant social circumstance, should be exposed, my reasons 
being, as I have explained to you, not those of the world, and 
I took that method to cause inquiry and create agitation regard- 
ing it. The day that the letter appeared in the World Mr. Til- 
ton came to my office, No. 44 Broad street, and7 showing me 
the letter, asked : ' Whom do you mean by that?' ' Mr. Til- 
ton/ said I, ' I mean you and Mr. Beecher.' I then told him 
what I knew, what I thought of it, and that I felt that I had a 
mission to bring it to the knowledge of the world, and that I 
had nearly determined to do so. I said to him much else on 
the subject ; and he said : ' Mrs. Woodhull, you are the first 
person I have ever met who has dared to, or else who could, 



HER MISSION TO EXPOSE BEECHER. 29 

tell me the truth/ He acknowledged that the facts, as I had 
heard them, were true, but declared that I did not } T et know 
the extent of the depravit}^ of that man — meaning Mr. Beecher. 
' Bat,' said he, ' do not take any steps now. I have carried 
my heart as a stone in my breast for months, for the sake of 
Elizabeth, my wife, who is broken-hearted as I am. I have 
had courage to endure rather than to add more to her weight 
of sorrow. For her sake I have allowed that rascal to go un- 
scathed. I have curbed my feelings when every impulse urged 
me to throttle and strangle him. Let me take you over to 
Elizabeth, and } t ou will find her in no condition to be dragged 
before the public ; and I know 3-ou will have compassion on her.' 
And I went and saw her, and I agreed with him on the propriety 
of delay.' 

" Reporter. — ' Was it during this interview that Mr. Tilton 
explained to you all that } t ou now know of the matter?' 

"Mrs. Wooclhull. — 'Oh, no. His revelations were made 
subsequently at sundry times, and during months of friendly 
intercourse, as occasion brought the subject up. I will, how- 
ever, condense his statements to me, and state the facts as he 
related them, as consecutively as possible. I kept notes of the 
conversations as the} r occurred from time to time, but the mat- 
ter is so much impressed on my mind that I have no hesitation 
in relating them from memory.' 

" Reporter. — ' Do } r ou not fear that by taking the responsi- 
bilny of this expose 3 r ou may involve 3 T ourself in trouble ? Even 
if all 3^ou relate should be true, may not those involved deny it 
in toto, even the fact of their having made the statements?' 

" Mrs. Woodhull. — ' I do not fear anything of the sort. I 
know this thing must come out, and the statement of the plain 
ungarnishecl truth will outweigh all the perjuries that can be 
invented, if it come to that pass. I have been charged with 
attempts at blackmailing, but I tell you, sir, there is not money 
enough in these two cities to purchase my silence in this matter. 
I believe it is my duty and nry mission to carry the torch to 
light up and destroy the heap of rottenness, which, in the name 
of religion, marital sanctit} r , and social purity, now passes as 
the social sj^stem. I know there are other churches just as 
false, other pastors just as recreant to their professed ideas of 
morality — by their immorality you know I mean their hypoc- 
risy. I am glad that just this one case comes to me to be 
exposed. This is a great congregation. He is a most eminent 
man. When a beacon is fired on the mountain the little hills 



30 WOODHULL A PROPHETESS. 

are lighted up. This exposition will send inquisition through 
all the churches and what is termed conservative society/ 
" Reporter. — ' You speak like some wierd prophetess, madam.' 
" Mrs. Woodhull. — ' I am a prophetess — I am an evangel — I 
am a saviour, if you would but see it ; but I too come not to 
bring peace, but a sword.' 

" Mrs. Woodhull then resumed, saying : ' Mr. Tilton first 
.began to have suspicions of Mr. Beecher on his own return 
from a long lecturing tour through the West. He questioned 
his little daughter, privately, in his study regarding what had 
transpired in his absence. 4 The tale of iniquitous horror that 
was revealed to me was,' he said, * enough to turn the heart of 
a stranger to stone, to say nothing of a husband and father.' 
It was not the fact of the intimacy alone, but in addition to 
that, the terrible orgies — so he said — of which his house had 
been made the scene, and the boldness with which matters had 
been carried on in the presence of his children — ' These things 
drove me mad,' said he, ' and I went to Elizabeth and con- 
fronted her with the child and the damning tale she had told 
me. My wife did not deny the charge nor attempt an}- pallia- 
tion. She was then enciente, and I felt sure that the child 
would not be my child. I stripped the wedding ring from her 
finger. I tore the picture of Mr. Beecher from my wall and 
stamped it in pieces. Indeed, I do not know what I did not 
do. I only look back to it as a time too horrible to retain any 
exact remembrance of. She miscarried the child and it was 
buried. For two weeks, night and day, I might have been 
found walking to and from that grave, in a state bordering on 
distraction. I could not realize the fact that I was what I was. 
I stamped the ring with which we had plighted our troth deep 
into the soil that covered the fruit of my wife's infidelity. I 
had friends, many and firm and good, but I could not go to 
them with this grief, and I suppose I should have remained 
silent through life had not an occasion arisen which demanded 
that I should seek counsel. Mr. Beecher learned that I had 
discovered the fact, and what had transpired between Elizabeth 
and myself, and when I was absent he called at my house and 
compelled or induced his victim to sign a statement he had 
prepared, declaring that so far as he, Mr. Beecher, was con- 
cerned, there was no truth in my charges, and that there had 
never been any criminal intimacy between them. Upon learn- 
ing this, as I did, I felt, of course, again outraged and could 
endure secrecy no longer. I had one friend who was like a 



MR. MOULTON OBTAINS THE LETTER. 31 

brother, Mr. Frank Moulton. I went to him and stated the 
case fully. We were both members of Plymouth Church. My 
friend took a pistol, went to Mr. Beecher and demanded the 
letter of Mrs. Tilton, under penalty of instant death.' 

" Mrs. Woodhull here remarked that Mr. Moulton had 
himself, also since, described to her this interview, with all the 
piteous and abject beseeching of Mr. Beecher not to be exposed 
to the public. 

"'Mr. Moulton obtained the letter,' said Mrs. W., 'and 
told me that he had it in his safe, where he should keep it until 
required for further use. After this, Mr. Tilton's house was 
no house for him, and he seldom slept or ate there, but fre- 
quented the house of his friend Moulton, who sympathized 
deeply with him. Mrs. Tilton was also absent days at a time, 
and, as Mr. Tilton informed me, seemed bent on destroying 
her life. I went as I have said to see her and found her, in- 
deed, a wretched wreck of a woman, whose troubles were 
greater than she could bear. She made no secret of the facts 
before me. Mr. Beecher's selfish, cowardly cruelty in endeav- 
oring to shield himself and create public opinion against Mr. 
Tilton, added poignancy to her anxieties. She seemed indif- 
ferent as to what should become of herself, but labored under 
fear that murder might be done on her account. 

" 'This was the condition of affairs at the time that Mr. Til- 
ton came to me. I attempted to show him the true solution of 
the imbroglio, and the folly that it was for a man like him, a 
representative man of the ideas of the future, to stand whining 
over inevitable events connected with this transition age and 
the social revolution of which we are in the midst. I told him 
that the fault and the wrong were neither in Mr. Beecher, nor 
in Mrs. Tilton, nor in himself; but that it was in the false 
social institutions under which we still live, while the more 
advanced men and women of the world have outgrown them in 
spirit ; and that, practically, everybod}^ is living a false life, by 
professing a conformity which they do not feel and do not live, 
and which they cannot feel and live any more than the grown 
bo} r can re-enter the clothes of his early childhood. I recalled 
to his attention splendid passages of his own rhetoric, in which 
he had unconscious!}' justified all the freedom that he was now 
condemning, when it came home to his own door, and endeavor- 
ing, in the spirit of a tyrant, to repress. 

"' I ridiculed the maudlin sentiment and mock heroics and 
4 dreadful suzz ' he was exhibiting over an event the most nat- 



32 WOODHULL LECTURES TILTON, 

ural in the world, and the most intrinsically innocent ; having 
in it not a bit more of real criminality than the awful wicked- 
ness of negro-stealing ' formerly charged, in perfect good faith, 
b}' the slaveholders, on every one who helped the escape of a 
slave. I assumed at once, and got a sufficient admission, as I 
always do in such cases, that he was not exactly a vestal virgin 
himself; that his real life was something very different from 
the awful ' virtue ' he was preaching, especially for women, as 
if women could ' sin ' in this matter without men, and men 
without women, and which, he pretended, even to himself, to 
believe in the face and eyes of his own life, and the lives of 
nearly all the greatest and best men and women that he knew ; 
that the ' dreadful suzz ' was merely a bogus sentimentality, 
pumped in his imagination, because our sickly religious litera- 
ture, and Sunda} r -school morality, and pulpit pharaseeism had 
humbugged him all his life into the belief that he ought to feel 
and act in this harlequin and absurd way on such an occasion 
— that, in a word, neither Mr. Beecher nor Mrs. Tilton had 
done any wrong, but that it was he who was playing the part 
of a fool and a tyrant ; that it was he and the factitious or man- 
ufactured public opinion back of him, that was wrong ; that 
this babyish whining and stage-acting were the real absurdity 
and disgrace — the unmanly part of the whole transaction, and 
that we only needed another Cervantes to satirize such stuff as 
it deserves to squelch it instantly and forever. I tried to show 
him that a true manliness would protect and love to protect ; 
would glory in protecting the absolute freedom of the woman 
who was loved, whether called wife, mistress, or b} T airy other 
name, and that the true sense of honor in the future will be, 
not to Jcnotu even what relations our lovers have with any and 
all other persons than ourselves — as true courtesy never seeks 
to spy over or to pry into other people's private affairs. 

" ' I believe I succeeded in pointing out to him that his own 
life was essentially no better than Mr. Beecher's, and that he 
stood in no position to throw the first stone at Mrs. Tilton or 
her reverend paramour. I showed him again and again that 
the wrong point, and the radically wrong thing, if not, indeed, 
quite the only wrong thing in the matter, was the idea ofoivner- 
ship in human beings, ivhich was essentially the same in the tico 
institutions of slavery and marriage. Mrs. Tilton had in turn 
grown increased^ unhappy when she found that Mr. Beecher 
had turned some part of his exuberant affections upon some 
other object. There was in her, therefore, the same sentiment 



TILTON BECOMES HER P TJPIL. 33 

of the real slaveholder. Let it be once understood that whoso- 
ever is true to himself or herself is thereby, and necessarily, true 
to all others, and the whole social question will be solved. The 
barter and sale of wives stands on the same moral footing as the 
barter and sale of slaves. The God-implanted human affections 
cannot, and will not, be any longer subordinated to these ex- 
ternal, legal restrictions and conventional engagements. Every 
hitman being belongs to himself or herself by a higher title than 
any lohich, by surrenders or arrangements or pyvomises, he or she 
can confer upon any other human being. S elf-owner ship is in- 
alienable. These truths are the latest and greatest discoveries 
in true science. 

" ' Perhaps Mr. Beecher knows and feels all this, and if so, 
in that knowledge consists his sole and his real justification, 
only the world around him has not yet grown to it; institutions 
are not } r et adapted to it ; and he is not brave enough to bear 
his open testimony to the truth he knows. 

" ' All this I said to Mr. Tilton ; and I urged upon him to 
make this providential circumstance in his life the occasion 
upon which he should, himself, come forward to the front and 
stand with the true champions of social freedom.' 

" Reporter. — ' Then Mr. Tilton became, as it were, your 
pupil, and you instructed him in 3-0111* theories.' 

" Mrs. Woodhull. — 'Yes, I suppose that is a correct state- 
ment ; and the verification of my views, springing up before 
my eyes upon this occasion, out of the very midst of religious 
and moral prejudices, was, I assure you, an interesting study 
for me, and a profound corroboration of the righteousness of 
what you call ' my Theories.' Mr. Tilton's conduct toward 
Mr. Beecher and toward his wife began from that time to be 
so magnanimous and grand — by which I mean simply just and 
right — so unlike that which most other men's would have been, 
that it stamped him, in m\ r mind, as one of the noblest souls 
that lived, and one capable of playing a great role in the social 
revolution, which is now so rapidly progressing. 

u ' I never could, however, induce him to stand wholly, and 
unreservedly, and on principle, upon the free-love platform ; 
and I always, therefore, feared that he might for a time vacil- 
late or go backward. But he opened his house to Mr. Beech- 
er, saying to him, in the presence of Mrs. Tilton : ' You love 
each other. Mr. Beecher, this is a distressed woman ; if it 
be in your power to alleviate her condition and make her life 
less a burden than it now is, be yours the part to clo it. You 
2* 



34 OUR SOCIAL SYSTEM. 

have nothing to fear from me.' From that time Mr. Beecher 
was, so to speak, the slave of Mr. Tilton and Mr. Moulton. 
He consulted them in every matter of any importance. It was 
at this time that Mr. Tilton introduced Mr. Beecher to me, 
and I met him frequently both at Mr. Tilton's and at Mr. 
Moulton's. We discussed the social problem freely in all its 
varied bearings, and I found that Mr. Beecher agreed with 
nearly all my views upon the question.' 

" Reporter. — ' Do } t ou mean to say that Mr. Beecher dis- 
approves of the present marriage system ? ' 

" Mrs. Wbodhull. — 'I mean to say just this — that Mr. 
Beecher told me that marriage is the grave of love, and that 
he never married a couple that he did not feel condemned.' 

" Reporter. — ' What excuse did Mr. Beecher give for not 
avowing these sentiments publicly ■? ' 

" Mrs. Wbodhull. — 'Oh, the moral coward's inevitable ex- 
cuse — that of inexpediency. He said he was twenty years 
ahead of his church ; that he preached the truth just as fast as 
he thought his people could bear it. I said to him, ' Then, Mr. 
Beecher, you are defrauding your people. You confess that 
you do not preach the truth as you know it, while the}- pay for 
and persuade themselves } T ou are giving them your best 
thought.' He replied : ' I know that our whole social system 
is corrupt. I know that marriage, as it exists to-day, is the 
curse of societ} r . We shall never have a better state until 
children are begotten and bred on the scientific plan. Stirpi- 
culture is what we need.' ' Then,' said I, ' Mr. Beecher, why 
do you not go into your pulpit and preach that science ? ' He 
replied : ' If I were to do so I should preach to empty seats. 
It would be the ruin of my church.' ' Then,' said I, ' you are 
as big a fraud as any time-serving preacher, and I now be- 
lieve you are all frauds. I gave you credit for ignorant hon- 
esty, but I find you all alike — all trying to hide, or afraid to 
speak the truth. A sorry pass has this Christian country 
come to, -paying 40,000 ministers to lie to it from Sunda} r to 
Sunday, to hide from them the truth that has been given them 
to promulgate.' ' 

" Reporter. — 'It seems you took a good deal of pains to 
draw Mr. Beecher out.' 

" Mrs. Wbodhull . — ' I did. I thought him a man who would 
dare a good deal for the truth, and that, having lived the life 
he had, and entertaining the private convictions he did, I could 
perhaps persuade him that it was his true policy to come out 



SHE DISPENSES WITH BEEGHER. 35 

and openly avow his principles, and be a thorough consistent 
radical, and thus justify his life in some measure, if not wholly, 
to the public.' 

" Reporter. — ' Was Mr. Beecher aware that you knew of 
his relations to Mrs. Tilton?' 

"Mrs. Woodhull. — ' Of course he was. It was because that 
I knew of them that he first consented to meet me. He could 
never receive me until he knew that I was aware of the real 
character he wore under the mask of his reputation. Is it not 
remarkable how a little knowledge of this sort brings clown the 
most top-lofty from the stilts on which they lift themselves 
above the common level ? ' 

" Reporter. — ' Do you still regard Mr. Beecher as a moral 
coward?' 

" Mrs. Woodhull. — 'I have found him destitute of moral 
courage enough to meet this tremendous demand upon him. In 
minor things, I know that he has manifested courage. He 
could not be induced to take the bold step I demanded of him, 
simply for the sake of truth and righteousness. I did not 
entirely despair ot him until about a } r ear ago. I was then 
contemplating my Steinway Hall speech on Social Freedom, and 
prepared it in the hope of being able to persuade Mr. Beecher 
to preside for me, and thus make a way for himself into a con- 
sistent life on the radical platform. I made my speech as soft 
as I conscientiously could. I toned it clown in order that it 
might not frighten him. When it was in type, I went to his study 
and gave him a copy and asked him to read it carefully and 
give me his candid opinion concerning it. Meantime, I had 
told Mr. Tilton and Mr. Moulton that I was going to ask Mr. 
Beecher to preside, and the}- agreed to press the matter with 
him. I explained to them that the only safety he had was in 
coming out as soon as possible an advocate of social freedom, 
and thus palliate, if he could. not completely justify, his prac- 
tices by founding them at least on principle. I told them that 
this introduction of me would bridge the way. Both the 
gentlemen agreed with me in this view, and I was for a time 
almost sure that my desire would be accomplished. A few 
days before the lecture, I sent a note to Mr. Beecher asking 
him to preside for me. This alarmed him. He went with it to 
Messrs. Tilton and Moulton asking advice. They gave it in 
the affirmative, telling him they considered it eminently fitting 
that he should pursue the course indicated by me as his only 
safety ; but it was not urged in such a way as to indicate that 



36 STEINWA Y HALL MEETING. 

they had known the request was to have been made. Matters 
remained undecided until the day of the lecture, when I went 
over again to press Mr. Beecher to a decision. I had then a 
long private interview with him, urging all the arguments I 
could to induce him to consent. He said he agreed perfectly 
with what I was to say, but that he could not stand on the 
platform of Steinway Hall and introduce me. He said, ' I 
^should sink through the floor. I am a moral coward on this 
subject, and I know it, and I am not fit to stand by } t ou, who 
go there to speak what } t ou know to be the truth ; I should 
stand there a living lie.' He got upon the sofa on his knees 
beside me, and taking my face between his hands, while the 
tears streamed down his cheeks, begged me to let him off. Be- 
coming thoroughly disgusted with what seemed to me pusilani- 
mity, I left the room under the control of a feeling of contempt 
for the man, and reported to my friends what he had said. 
They then took me again with them and endeavored to per- 
suade him. Mr. Tilton said to him : c Mr. Beecher, some 
day you have got to fall ; go and introduce this woman and 
win the radicals of the country, and it will break youx fall.' 
4 Do you think,' said Beecher, ' that this thing will come out 
to the world ? ' Mr. Tilton replied : i Nothing is more certain 
in earth or heaven, Mr. Beecher ; and this may be your last 
chance to save 3'ourself from complete ruin." 

" ' Mr. Beecher replied : ' I can never endure such a terror. 
Oh ! if it must come, let me know of it twenty-four hours in 
advance, that I imiy take my own life. I cannot, cannot face 
this thing !' 

" 4 Thoroughly out of all patience, I turned on my heel and 
said : ' Mr. Beecher, if I am compelled to go upon that plat- 
form alone, I shall begin by telling the audience wiry I am 
alone, and wh} r j-ou are not with me,' and I again left the room. 
I afterward learned that Mr. Beecher, frightened at what I 
had said, promised, before parting with Mr. Tilton, that he 
would preside if he could bring his courage up to the terrible 
ordeal. 

" ' It was four minutes of the time for me to go forward to 
the platform at Steinway Hall when Mr. Tilton and Mr. 
Moulton came into the ante-room asking for Mr. Beecher. 
When I told them he had not come they expressed astonish- 
ment. I told them I should faithfully keep my word, let the 
consequences be what they might. At that moment word 
was sent me that there was an organized attempt to break up 



CLERGY AND EDITORS ARE BIGOTS. 37 

the meeting, and that threats were being made against my life 
if I dared to speak what it was understood I intended to speak. 
Mr. Tilton then insisted on going on the platform with me 
and presiding, to which I finally agreed, and that I should not 
at that time mention Mr. Beeciier. I shall never forget the 
brave words he uttered in introducing me. They had a magic 
influence on the audience, and drew the sting of those who 
intended to harm me. However much Mr. Tilton may have 
since regretted his course regarding me, and whatever he may 
sa} T about it, I shall alwa3 T s admire the moral courage that enabled 
him to stand with me on that platform, and face that, in part, de- 
fiant audience. It is hard to bear the criticisms of vulgar minds, 
who can see in social freedom nothing but licentiousness and 
debauchery, and the inevitable misrepresentation of the entire 
press, which is as perfectly subsidized against reason and com- 
mon sense, when social subjects are discussed, as is the relig- 
ious press when any other science is discussed which is supposed 
to militate against the Bible as the direct word of God to man. 
The editors are equally bigots, or else as dishonest as the 
clerg} T . The nightmare of a public opinion, which they are 
still professionally engaged in making, enslaves and condemns 
them both.' 

" Mrs. Woodhull concluded by saying that since her Stein- 
wa} r Hall speech she had surrendered all hope of easing the 
fall of Mr. Beecher, that she had not attempted to see him, 
and had not in fact seen him. She only added one other fact, 
which was, that Mr. Beeciier endeavored to induce Mr. Til- 
ton to withdraw from his membership in Plymouth Church, 
to leave him, Mr. Beecher, free from the embarrassment of 
his presence there ; and that Mr. Tilton had indignantly 
rejected the proposition, determined to hold the position with 
a view to such contingencies as might subsequently occur. 

" So much for the interviewing which was to have been pub- 
lished some months ago ; but when it failed or was suppressed, 
I was still so far undecided that I took no steps in the matter, 
and had no definite plan for the future in respect to it, until 
the events as I have recited them, which occurred at Boston. 
Since then I have not doubted that I must make up my mind 
definitely to act aggressarily in this matter, and to use the 
facts in my knowledge to compel a more wide-spread discus- 
sion of the social question. I take the step deliberately, as an 
agitator and social revolutionist, which is my profession. I 
commit no breach of confidence, as no confidences have been 



38 BEECHER A POWER IN THE WORLD. 

made to me, except as I have compelled them, with a full 
knowledge that I was endeavoring to induce or force the 
parties to come to the front along with me in the announce- 
ment and advocacy of the principles of social revolution. 
Messrs. Beecher and Tilton, and other half-way reformers', 
are to me like the border States in the great rebellion. They 
are liable to fall, with the weight of their influence, on either 
side in the contest, and I hold it to be legitimate generalship 
to compel them to declare on the side of truth and progress. 

" My position is justly analogous with that of warfare. The 
public, Mr. Beecher included, would gladly crush me if they 
could — will do so if they can — to prevent me from forcing on 
them considerations of the utmost importance. My mission 
is, on the other hand, to utter the unpopular truth, and make 
it efficient by whatsoever legitimate means ; and means are 
legitimate as a war measure, which would be highly reprehen- 
sible in a state of peace. I believe, as the law of peace, in the 
right of privacy, in the sanctity of individual relations. It is 
nobody's business but their own, in the absolute view, what 
Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton have done, or may choose at 
any time to do, as between themselves. And the world needs, 
too, to be taught just that lesson. I am the champion of that 
very right of privacy and of individual sovereignt}\ But, that 
is only one side of the case. I need, and the world needs, Mr. 
Beecher's powerful championship of this very right. The 
world is on the very crisis of its final fight for liberty. The 
victory may fall on the wrong side, and his own libeily and 
mine, and the world's, be again crushed out, or repressed for 
another century for the want of fidelity in him to the new 
truth. It is not, therefore, Mr. Beecher as the individual that 
I pursue, but Mr. Beecher as the representative man ; Mr. 
Beecher as a power in the world ; and Mr. Beecher as my 
auxiliary in a great war for freedom, or Mr. Beecher as a vio- 
lent enemy and a powerful hindrance to all that I am bent on 
accomplishing. 

" To Mr. Beecher, as the individual citizen, I tender, there- 
fore, my humble apology, meaning and deeply feeling what I 
say, for this or any interference on my part, with his private 
conduct. I hold that Mr. Tilton himself, that Mrs. Beecher 
herself, have no more right to inquire, or to know or to spy 
over, with a view to knowing, what has transpired between Mr. 
Beecher and Mrs. Tilton than i\\Qy have to know what I ate 
for breakfast, or where I shall spend any next evening ; and 



PARADOX OF LIFE. 39 

that Mr. Beecher's congregation and the public at large have 
just as little right to know or to inquire. I hold that the so- 
called morality of society is a complicated mass of sheer imper- 
tinence and a scandal on the civilization of this advanced cen- 
tury, that the system of social espionage under which we live 
is damnable, and that the very first axiom of a true morality, 
is for the people to mind their own business, and learn to respect, 
religiously, the social freedom and the sacred social privacy of 
all others ; but it was the paradox of Christ, that as the Prince 
of Peace, he still brought on earth, not peace but a sword. It 
is the paradox of life that, in order to have peace, we must first 
have war ; and it is the paradox of m} r position that, believing 
in the right of privacy and in the perfect right of Mr. Beecher 
socially, morally and divinely to have sought the embraces of 
Mrs. Tilton, or of any other woman or women whom he loved 
and who loved him, and being a promulgator and a public cham- 
pion of those very rights, I still invade the most secret and 
sacred affairs of his life, and drag them to the light and expose 
him to the opprobrium and vilification of the public. I do again, 
and with deep sincerity, ask his forgiveness. But the case is 
exceptional, and what I do, I do for a great purpose. The 
social world is in the very agony of its new birth, or, to resume 
the warlike simile, the leaders of progress are in the very act 
of storming the last fortress of bigotry and error. Somebody 
must be hurled forward into the gap. I have the power, I 
think, to compel Mr. Beecher to go forward and to do the 
duty for humanuy from which he shrinks ; and I should, my- 
self, be false to the truth if I were to shrink from compelling 
him. Whether he sinks or swims in the fiery trial, the agita- 
tion by which truth is evolved will have been promoted. And 
I believe that he will not only survive, but that when forced to 
the encounter he will rise to the full height of the great enter- 
prise, and will astound and convince the world of the new gos- 
pel of freedom, by the depth of his experiences and the force 
of his argument. 

" The world, it seems, will never learn not to crucif}^ its 
Christs, and not to compel the retractation of its Galileos. Mr. 
Beecher has lacked the courage to be a martyr, but, like Gali- 
leo, while retracting, or concealing and evading, he has known 
in his heart that the world still moves; and I venture to proph- 
es} r , as I have indeed full faith, that he and the other parties 
to this social drama will } r et live to be overwhelmed with grati- 
tude to me for having compelled them to this publicity. The 



40 CLAMOR OF GRUNDY. 

age is pregnant with great events, and this may be the very 
one which shall be, as it were, the crack of doom to our old 
and worn out, and false and hypocritical social institutions. 
When the few first waves of public indignation shall have 
broken over him, when the nine daj^s' wonder and the aston- 
ished clamor of Mrs. Grundy shall have done their worst, and 
when the pious ejaculations of the sanctimonious shall have 
been expended, and he finds that he still lives, and that there 
are brave souls who stand by him, he will, I believe, rise in his 
power and utter the whole truth. I believe I see clearly and 
prophetically for him in the future a work a hundred times 
greater than all he has accomplished in the past. I believe, 
as I have said, a wise Providence, or, as I term it, and believe 
it to be, the conscious and well calculated interference . of the 
spirit world, has forecast and prepared those very events as a 
part of the drama of this great social revolution. Of all the 
centres of influence on the great broad planet, the destiny that 
shapes our ends, bent on breaking up an old civilization and 
ushering in a new one, could have found no such spot for its 
vantage ground as Plymouth Church, no such man for the hero 
of the plot as its reverend pastor, and, it ma}?- be, no such hero- 
ine as the gentle cultured, and, perhaps, hereafter to be sainted 
wife of Plymouth Church's most distinguished layman. Indeed 
I think that Mrs. Tilton has had, at least at times, a clearer 
intuition guiding her, a better sense of right, and more courage 
than her reverend lover ; for, on one occasion, Mr. Tilton told 
me that he took home to her one of my threatening notices, and 
told her that that meant her and Mr. Beecher, and that the 
exposure must and would come ; and he added that she calmly 
replied : 4 1 am prepared for it. If the new social gospel must 
have its martyrs, and if I must be one of them, I am prepared 
for it.' 

" In conclusion, let us again consider, for a moment, the 
right and the wrong of this whole transaction. Let us see 
whether the wrong is not on the side where the public puts the 
right, and the right on the side where the public puts the 
wrong. The immense physical potenc} r of Mr. Beecher, and 
the indomitable urgency of his great nature for the intimacy 
and the embraces of the noble and cultured women about him, 
instead of being a bad thing as the world thinks, or thinks 
that it thinks, or professes to think that it thinks, is one of the 
noblest and grandest of the endowments of this truly great and 
representative man. The amative impulse is the pliy siological 



THE GREAT PREACHERS MAGNETISM. 41 

basis of character. It is this which emanates zest and mag- 
netic power to his whole audience through the organism of the 
great preacher. Plymouth Church has lived and fed, and the 
healthy vigor of public opinion for the last quarter of a century 
has been augmented and strengthened from the physical ama- 
tiveness of Henry Ward Beecher. The scientific world know 
the physiological facts of this nature, but they have waited for a 
weak woman to have the moral courage to tell the world such 
truths. Passional starvation, enforced on such a nature, so 
richly endowed, by the ignorance and prejudice of the past, is 
a horrid cruelty. The bigoted public, to which the great 
preacher ministered, while literally eating and drinking of his 
flesh and blood, condemned him, in their ignorance, to live 
without food. Every great man of Mr. Beecher's t}*pe has 
had, in the past, and will ever have, the need for, and the right 
to, the loving manifestations of many women, and when the 
public graduates out of the ignorance and prejudice of its 
childhood, it will recognize this necessity and its own past in- 
justice. Mr. Beecher's grand and amative nature is not, then, 
the bad element in the whole matter, but intrinsically a good 
thing, and one of God's best gifts to the world. 

" So again, the tender, loving, womanly concessiveness of 
Mrs. Tilton, her susceptibility to the charm of the great 
preacher's magnetism, her love of loving and of being loved, 
none of these were the bad thing which the world thinks them, 
or thinks that it thinks them, or professes to think that it 
thinks them to be. On the contrary they are all of them the 
best thing — the best and most beautiful of things, the loveliest 
and most divine of things which belong to the patrimony of 
mankind. 

" So again, it was not the coming together of these two 
loving natures in the most intimate embrace, nor was it, that 
nature blessed that embrace with the natural fruits of love 
which was the bad element in this whole transaction. They, 
on the contrary, were good elements, beautiful and divine 
elements, and among God's best things for man. 

" The evil and the whole evil in this whole matter, then, lies 
elsewhere. It lies in a false and artificial or manufactured 
opinion, in respect to this very question of what is good or 
what is evil in such matters. It lies in the belief that society 
has the right to prohibit, to prescribe and regulate, or in any 
manner to interfere with the private love manifestations of its 
members, any more than it has to prescribe their food and 



42 KR8: ISABELLA HOOKER. 

their drink. It lies in the belief consequent upon this, that 
lovers own their lovers, husbands their wives and wives their 
husbands, and that they have the right to complain of, to spy 
over, and to interfere, even to the extent of murder, with every 
other or outside manifestation of love. It lies in the compul- 
sory hypocrisy and systematic falsehood which is thus enforced 
and inwrought into the very structure of society, and in the 
consequent and wide-spread injury to the whole community. 
" " Mr. Beecher knows all this, and if by my act he is com- 
pelled to tell the world that he knows it, and to force them to 
the conviction that it is all true, he may well thank God that I 
live, and that circumstances have concurred to emancipate him, 
despite of himself, from his terrible thralldom, and to emanci- 
pate, through him, in the future, millions of others. 

" Still in conclusion, let me acid, that in my view, and in the 
view of others who think with me, and of all, as I believe, 
who think rightly on the subject, Mr. Beecher is to-cla} r , and 
after all that I have felt called upon to reveal of his life, as 
good, as pure and as noble a man as he ever was in the past, 
or as the world has held him to be, and that Mrs. Tilton is 
still the pure, charming, cultured woman. It is, then, the 
public opinion that is wrong, and not the individuals, who 
must, nevertheless, for a time suffer its persecution. 

" Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker has, from the time that I 
met her in Washington, stood my fast friend, and given me 
manifold proofs of her esteem, knowing, as she did, both my 
radical opinions and my free life. I have been told, not by 
her, but upon what I believe to be perfectly good authorit}-, 
that she has for months, perhaps for years past, known the life 
of her brother, and urged on him to announce publicly his 
radical convictions, and assured him that if he would do so 
she, at least, would stand by him. I know, too, by intimate 
intercourse, the opinions, and, to a great extent, the lives of 
nearly all the leading reformatory men and women in the land ; 
and I know that Mr. Beecher, passing through this crucial 
ordeal, retrieving himself and standing upon the most radical 
platform, need not stand alone for an hour, but that an army 
of glorious and emancipated spirits will gather spontaneously 
and instantaneous^ around him, and that the new social re- 
public will have been forever established. 

Victoria C. Woodhull." 



O. H. BEECHER S LETTER. 43 

As Mrs. Hooker's name appears frequently in this work, we 
may state that during the excitement attending the labors of 
the Committee, G. H. Beecher wrote a letter to the Brooklyn 
Eagle in which he says: — 

On the occasion of Mrs. Hooker's visit to New York, and threatened 
invasion of Plymouth pulpit, (it was at the time of the funeral of Horace 
Greeley), Dr. Edward Beecher called to see her in New York, and as he 
can testify, she did not pretend to have evidence from Mrs. Tilton nor 
from Mr. Beecher, except that he refused to deny the charge and talk with 
her about it, (the course which, with few exceptions, he pursued with every 
one), but her sole reliance was upon the testimony of Mrs. Woodhull, 
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. Upon this testimony, coupled with the 
refusal of her brother to discuss the subject with her, she based her belief 
of his guilt, and wished to ascend Plymouth pulpit and read a confession 
which she had prepared for him, to the Plymouth people, and then she 
would plead in his behalf. She also desired that he would place himself 
at the head of a new woman's movement, and she would stand by and up- 
hold him. Far be it from me to speak against this loving sister ; for her 
letters, several of which I have read, breathe the tenderest, noblest sym- 
pathy and love toward her brother, and if ever they are published they 
will touch the hearts of all in this respect. Her views on the marriage re- 
lation are somewhat similar to those of Mrs. Woodhull, though not so 
gross. She does not believe in promiscuous free love as does Mrs. Wood- 
hull, but the law should not bind man and wife together when they have 
ceased to love one another. She also believes that having separated on 
such grounds, they should be at liberty to marry again if they find mates 
that they truly love. She was devotedly attached to Mrs. Woodhull, and 
has never withdrawn from her. The strange fascination which this re- 
markable woman possessed over her is evinced, among other things, by the 
letter which she wrote to Mrs. Woodhull, about the time of her nomina- 
tion by the free love wing of the Woman's Suffrage Convention as candi- 
date for the Presidency of the United States, commencing as follows : — 
"My darling Queen," and proceeding in the same rhapsodical language. 
I wish the letter could be reproduced. It was published in the papers at 
the time. In her interview with her brother Edward she seemed in a wild 
and excited state of mind. The interview of Henry with her, as he stated 
to his brother, was to soothe and quiet her and induce her to return home. 
He said he refused for her sake to enter upon the subject, and his refusal 
to deny the stories, or say anything about them, was because if he did so it 
would bring up the whole subject for discussion between them, and she 
would bring forward her evidence from these women, which he could not 
enter into or explain without making her a confidant of the whole matter, 
and, as she was in constant communication with these women, he did not 
judge it best for him to do so in any shape or manner. 



44 THEODORE PARKER. 

14 Ringgold St. Providence, R. I. \ 
September 16, 1872. \ 

My Dear Victoria: 

My husband and myself called on Friday evening, accompanied by Mrs. 
Colonel Pope, of Harrison street, on Mrs. J. H. Conant, and found her at 
home ; Dr. Pyke was with her. He, the doctor, entered into conversation 
with me concerning your attack upon Beecher, as he termed it, which I de- 
fended, whereupon Theodore Parker controlled Mrs. Conant, and spoke in 
substance as follows : 

" When Henry Ward Beecher, knowing spiritualism to be true, stood in his 
own pulpit and denounced it as 'one of the most dangerous humbugs of the 
day,' the spirit world felt that it had pleaded and borne with him long enough, 
and that they would unmask and show him to the world a hypocrite as he is. 
This it has done, and it mattered little whether Mrs. Conant, Yictoria Wood- 
hull or Laura Cuppy Smith was the instrument used. The spirit world has 
not yet completed its work. Other canting hypocrites remain to be proclaimed 
to the public in their true colors, and the Scripture shall be verified, ' There is 
nothing secret that shall not be made known, nothing hidden that shall not be 
revealed.' If I could have divested my medium of the influence of persons in 
the form I should have proclaimed this through her lips on the platform of 
John A. Andrews' hall on Wednesday afternoon." 

" I think I have given you Theodore Parker's words verbatim. 

" The same evening I was conversing with E. B. Beckwith, a prominent 
lawyer of Boston, who remarked that there seemed to him to be a retribution 
following the Beechers, and that you could use in your own behalf the same 
argument in vindication of your exposure of Beecher that Mrs. Stowe and her 
family had used in her defence with regard to the Byron affair, with this ad- 
dition, that you had not accused the living, who could defend themselves, of 
half so base a crime as she had laid to the charge of the poet and a sister 
woman, the dead who could not reply. I thought the suggestion too good to 
be lost, shall use it myself freely, and send it to you. 

Laura Cuppy Smith. 

The publication of this article, as may well be supposed, 
struck everybody, who was not familiar with the cool audacity 
of the author of it, with astonishment. The paper was in 
great demand, and within a few hours not a copy could be 
obtained, except at exhorbitant prices. The author, the fol- 
lowing day, paid two dollars for a copy, from which the 
above is extracted, and as high as ten dollars were paid for 
copies. In Brooklyn, and especially among the congregation 



CON STERNA TION IN PL TMO TJTH CHURCH. 45 

of Plymouth Church, the most alarming consternation was 
caused by it, and, as a matter of course, gossip became at once 
busy with the names of the Plymouth pastor and some ladies 
of the congregation to whom Mr. Beech er had shown little 
attentions. The public outside of the church directly affected, 
had come to look upon the " female brokers " as blackmailers 
who would not stop at any unscrupulous means, nor spare the 
most sacred hearthstones, to secure money, and the press very 
generally ignored it as a nasty scandal, unfit to be even refer- 
red to. 

But when Mrs. Woodhull reiterated the scandal in her paper 
and on the platform, people began to enquire : — 

"Why does not Mr. Beecher cause the arrest of these vile 



women 



p» 



But he still remained silent, and still retained the confidence 
of the people who had so long loved him for his nobleness of 
character and spotless life. A little later, however, when, 
through the instrumentality of Anthony Oomstock, of the 
Young Men's Christian Association, the women were arrested 
for circulating obscene literature, their office and paper confis- 
cated, and leading friends of Mr. Beecher appeared as prose- 
cuting counsel, suspicions were aroused that there was some- 
thing in the story after all, and that Plymouth Church was 
stationed in the shadow of the Criminal Court, to prose- 
cute them. Sympathy was enlisted in their behalf, and as 
will be seen by a reference to the trial, in another part of this 
work, the "brokers ; ' were acquitted. 



CHAPTER II. 

C, THB REPUBLIC THREATENED! — THE BEECHER-TILTON SCAN- 
DAL AND THE BEECHER-BOWEN-COMSTOCK CONSPIRACY— 
THE SEAL BROKEN AT LAST— WOODHULL'S ' LIES ' AND 
THEODORE TILTON'S ' TRUE STORY ' — THE ACCOUNT HOR- 
RIBLE AT BEST — f NO OBSCENITY,' BUT GOD'S TRUTH— THE 
THUNDERBOLT SHATTERS A BAD CROWD AND PLOUGHS UP 



rpHE arrest of the brokers and the suppression of their paper, 
-*- however, did not deter them from their warfare upon 
Mr. Beecher, and society generally, which did not accept of 
them as the true * teachers of a new social system. Theodore 
Tilton, it is believed, himself added fuel to the flame by 
spreading broadcast among his friends his version of the case. 
The publication of "Woodhull's charges, however, was a mere 
bombshell, compared with what was to follow. The commu- 
nity had now become excited, — so much so, that people eagerly 
read everything published on the subject — and in May follow- 
ing there was issued simultaneously in Albany, Troy and New 
York a review of the case in a paper called The Thunderbolt, 
established by Edward H. G-. Clark, editor of the Troy WJiig, 
for the special purpose of exposing the Plymouth pastor to 
greater shame. In the editorial accompanying the statement 
the editor says : — 

" This is a special paper issued to defy conspirators, beat 
free speech, and rouse a nation. It will be published as occa- 
sion mav demand. * * * As a mere scandal the affairs of 

46 



THE THUNDERBOLT. 47 

Mr. Beecher would be of no consequence. But the terrible 
violations of justice and law that have grown out of that scan- 
dal, make it the most momentous question of American rights 
since the da} T s of Garrison and the abolitionists. And this 
alone is the interest in it held by Mr. Edward G. H. Clark, 
the writer of our leading article — [The True Story — Author] 
and one of the editors of the Thunderbolt. * * * Mr. 
Clark has, therefore, assumed by name the direct responsibili- 
ty of his article. He is too ivell Jcnoivn among Mr. Beecher's 
own friends to be charged ivith any nonsense of ' black-mail,' 
and he is ready to step into court and prove his assertions, if 
any one dares to take him there." 

This publication, introduced as above to the public really 
proved what its name implied. It was a Thunderbolt — a dis- 
charge of red-hot shot upon the Plymouth Church, — yel, to this 
day, no one has accepted Mr. Clark's challenge to take him into 
court, and compel him to prove his accusations ! It was gener- 
ally believed that this volley was discharged by Mr. Tilton, and 
although he has frequently been accused of its authorship, he 
has not publicly denied it. It is " The True Story," often re- 
ferred to in the discussion of the great case. But we will pro- 
ceed to give the " True Story " to the reader. 

It may be stated in this connection that the headings to this 
chapter are those attached to the original article, as it ap- 
peared in The Thunderbolt, and not those of the author : — 

" Christianity is the highest world of civilization, and the 
spirit of Jesus is the true Religion of humanit}^. But to-day 
the orthodox pulpit is a menace to forty millions of people. 
To save one powerful preacher from deserved shame its retainers 
have raped the goddess of American libert}\ And to accom- 
plish this outrage they have resorted to fraud, and have not 
scrupled at a monstrous conspiracy. 'Tis the purpose of this 
paper, the Thunderbolt, to stun the nation into a knowledge of 
these crimes. The ' Evangelical Church ' with its Young 
Mens Christian Association, shall no longer cheat the govern- 
ment, brow-beat the courts and subsidize the press, with impu- 
nity. When a republic is crucified between its priests and its 
editors, honest patriots should speak out. It is time that 
theological plotters be thrown upon the defensive, and be made 



48 TRUTH AND A FALSEHOOD. 

to beg of common sense a further lease of their own life. The 
Thunderbolt has power to effect much of this purpose through 
the very ' forbidden fruit ' that has tempted the present quacks 
of conventional piety to become liars, perjurers and law-break- 
ers. By this forbidden fruit, I mean the Greatest Social 
Drama of modern times, The Beecher-Tilton Scandal ! This 
scandal as reported b}^ Victoria C. Woodhull is at once truth 
and a falsehood ; or as Theodore Tilton has himself explained, 
a ' true stoiy ' underlies the false one. Three months after the 
Woodhull account had been published, and no one had given 
the public a direct, authentic denial of it — three months after 
the country had been insulted in connection with it by the 
moral and legal fraud of obscene literature, I was stung into 
writing a full account, analysis and criticism, of the Beecher 
and Tilton scandal. In that article (published in the Troy 
Daily Press of February 11th, and since reproduced in other 
journals), the Woodhull account was given in condensed form 
as follows : 

" ' The Beecher-Tilton scandal case/ is this, Mrs. Woodhull declares there 
has been a long, continued liaison between Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton ; 
that it first came to Mr. Tilton's knowledge through the revelation of one of 
his children ; that he accused Mrs. Tilton of it, and received her acknowledg- 
ment of her guilt ; that he was driven nearly to insanity at the moment and 
treated Mrs. Tilton so severely that she miscarried a child, which was con- 
sidered the offspring of Mr. Beecher. Mr. Tilton kept his grief secret, however 
as Mrs. Woodhull asserts, until Mr. Beecher went again to his house during 
his absence, and extorted a letter from Mrs. Tilton to the effect that he had 
never been guilty of the wrong she had acknowledged to her husband. Then 
Mr. Tilton doubly outraged, confided his grief to a bosom friend, Mr. Frank 
Moulton, who went to Beecher's house and forced him at the mouth of a 
pistol to give up the letter. This story, in whole or in part Mrs. Woodhull 
says was first revealed to her by Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, who received 
it from Mrs. Tilton and then by Mrs. Elizabeth Cadt Stanton, who received it 
from Mr. Tilton. The knowledge of it came to Mrs. Woodhull in the early 
part of 18Y0, and she refers to an allusion which she made to it in Woodhull 
and ClajHrCs Weekly. at that time. ' Subsequently,' continues Mrs. Woodhull, I 
published a letter in both World and Times in which was the following sen- 
tence : 

" " I know a clergyman of eminence in Brooklyn, who lives in concubinage 
with the wife of another clergyman of equal eminence.' Mrs. Woodhull affirms 
that the day when this letter appeared in the World, Mr. Tilton came to her 
office, No. 44 Broad St., and showing Mrs. Woodhull the letter, asked her 



A BOMB SHELL. 49 

whom she meant. 'Mr. Tilton,' she replied, 4 I mean you and Mr. Beecher.' 
According to Mrs. "Woodhull's statement, Mr. Tilton then acknowledged that 
the account was true and worse than she had heard it. But he said that he 
was broken-hearted and his wife was broken-hearted, and that she especially 
was then in no condition to be dragged before the public. Mr. Tilton took 
her to see Mrs. Tilton, and both imparted to her the whole story. The same 
thing was again detailed to her by Mr. Tilton's friend, Mr. Frank Moulton> 
and finally by Henry Ward Beecher himself. " 

"Mrs. Woodhull's declared purpose in publishing the 
Beecher-Tilton Scandal was to create a ' Social Revolution.' 
She wished to show that the foremost minds of the age had out- 
grown the institution of marriage rendering to it only the out- 
ward homage of hypocrites, not the adherence of conscience or 
the practice of life. There is no danger that any social revolu- 
tion will grow to proportions beyond the actual truth and 
common-sense contained in it. But in one thing Woodiiull & 
Claflin instantly succeeded : they created a social panic that 
turned New York into a mob. Their scandal, as they have 
since boasted, was indeed ' a bombshell' that carried dismay on 
every hand an infernal machine of letters so terrific that many 
even feared to read it,' while others cursed and prayed, laughed 
and cried as if in the presence of the ' crack of doom.' 

" The plans of this Social Revolution it seems were somewhat 
deeply laid. The issue of Woodiiull and Claflin'' s Weekly 
containing the bombshell was dated Nov. 2d 1872. But antici- 
pating that some steps might be taken to suppress the entire 
issue when its contents should become known, the paper was 
dispatched to its subscribers a week in advance, and, (if the 
word of its social revolutionist " can be trusted in airything) to 
the entire list of newspapers in the United States, Canada and 
Great Britain." Then on Monday morning the 28th of Octo- 
ber it was put on sale at the Woodiiull headquarters. Before 
night the demand grew to a rush." During the week it 
increased to a crush needing even the regulation of the police. 
'Tis said the sales reached a hundred and fifty thousand copies, 
and promised two millions. For several da} T s newsmen retailed 
the paper as high as fifty cents. On the day of its suppression 
two dollars and a-half was a common price for it. In some 
instances single copies brought ten dollars and one extraordi- 
nary lover of literature is reported to have invested forty dollars 
in a copy. Owners of the paper then leased it to other readers 
at a dollar a day.' 

3 - ~ 



50 A CONSPIRACY. 

" But b} r Saturday Nov. 2d the general panic of good society 
in New York had so far subsided that some steps were indeed 
taken and with a vengeance to suppress the Beecher-Tilton 
scandal. And 'tis these steps alone that make the scandal of 
sufficient importance to claim the interference of persons ' in 
no way connected with it, and to need the unfaltering scrutiny 
of the public' These c steps,' then were nothing less than a 
daring conspiracy not merely against the audacious and hated 
women Woodhull and Claflin, but against the whole people 
of the United States. In no other terms will I ever consent to 
describe that bastard New York monstrosit}-, begotten of lust, 
fear and guilt — the arrest of Woodhull and Claflin for 
publishing obscene literature.' 

" If I had myself been situated like Theodore Tilton on the 
day of that arrest, and the darlings of my household had been 
so cruelly belied as his true story claims of his own, I don't 
know but I could have gone into Broad St. and cut the throats 
of Woodhull, Claflin and Blood, with as little compunction 
as I would shoot a mad dog. But that would have been a bus- 
iness and a risk confined to three or four persons. It would 
not have been a national fraud endangering every great princi- 
ple at the bottom of human liberty. The special friends how- 
ever, of Henry Ward Beecher the skulkers of Plymouth 
Church and the Young Men's Christian Association — preferred 
to deflour the laws of their country and the freedom of its peo- 
ple by a gigantic performance of bigotry and chicanery. In the 
shadow of their false pretences, the Woodhull slanders, how- 
ever atrocious have grown comparatively dim and insignificant. 
The question of the mere rake, whom the moralist might pity 
and forgive, sinks in the question of the conspirator and 
traitor, whom the patriot must hate.' 

" A law of the United States passed June 8. 1872 makes a 
very proper provision in aid of public morals hj branding the 
transmission of obscene literature through the mails as a misde- 
meanor. The act is this : — 

" 'No obscene book, pamphlet, picture, print, or other publication of a vul- 
gar or indecent character, or any letter upon the envelope of which, or postal 
card upon which, scurrilous epithets may have been written or printed, or 
disloyal devices printed or engrossed, shall be carried in the mail ; and any 
person who shall knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited, for mailing or 
delivery, any such obscene publication shall be deemed guilty of a mis- 
demeanor, and on conviction thereof shall for any such offence be fined not 



PURPOSE OF THE PUBLICATION. 51 

» 
more than five hundred dollars, or be imprisoned at hard labor not exceeding 
one year, or both, at the discretion of the courts.' I 

" Whatever sins Woodhull and Claflin had committed in 
issuing their Weekly of Nov. 2d, 1872, they had carefully 
avoided an}' violation of this statute against obscene literature. 
Their paper contained a harrowing account of seduction — an 
instance of such diabolical heartlessness that the noted philan- 
thropist, Parker Pillsijury, has since declared that if its rev- 
elations were true, ' no matter though Mrs. Woodhull were an 
imp of hell, she should have a monument of polished Parian 
marble as high as Trinity steeple, and every father and mother 
of daughters should be proud to contribute a stone.' In addi- 
tion to that nightmare of horrors the paper contained several 
bold articles on social, religious and financial themes, in the 
midst of which was the Bekciier-Tilton Scandal — a sad, unex- 
pected story of adultery, but differing little in its detail from 
scores of such stories reported in hundreds of newspapers. 
There is only one test of obscene literature — the purpose of the 
publication ; and any other test a free people should resent, if 
necessary, with battle and blood. Any other test would over- 
turn the Bible, destroy the classics, and exclude physiology 
from human knowledge. It would insult the grave of every 
great thinker and poet, from Plato to Shakspeare and Burns. 
It would steal the bread and meat of letters, and leave only 
the baby sugar-tits of a Sunday school library. The purpose 
of obscene literature is to pamper lust, and no fact, no fiction 
is obscene without this purpose. But the expressed intent of 
the Woodhull articles was to destroy lust, and whether this 
intent was real or feigned, the articles were so written as almost 
to stop the breath and freeze the soul. In a word, they were 
ghastly, sickening libels if false, but no more obscene than a 
picture of the crucifixion. 

"Woodhull and Claflin were, however, two women regarded 
almost as outlaws. They had become feared as " blackmail- 
ers," and unfragrantly notorious as ' free-lovers.' For such 
reasons, undoubtedly, the special guardians of Mr. Beecher's 
reputation thought that the worst of means might be good 
enough to sweep ' female nuisances ' out of Broad Street. Pub- 
lic sentiment zuas exasperated, not quite enough for a direct mob, 
but an indirect mob, slinking behind a pretence of law, might 
crush its victims icith safety. In this position, the legal subter- 
fuge was found in the act of Congress passed to punish the 



52 THE STAR CHAMBER. 

venders of obscene prints. Then Mr. Anthont J. Comstcck, 
backed by the Young Men's Christian Association, stepped up 
to manage the dangerous fraud. Mr. Comstock is generally 
credited with ' good intentions,' and as hell, also, is said to be 
paved with the same materials, I have never doubted their 
presence in the man. God seems to have made him partly a 
fool in order that the fellow could, do a good w r ork as long as 
lie could be kept from getting above his business. The dirty 
wretches who corrupt young minds by feeding them on licen- 
tious books need some little man, by nature a spy and Irypo- 
crite, to check their villainous trade. A full-grown, honest 
soul could neither sell the books nor dodge and lie to catch 
those who do. In such a dilemma the earth has a Comstock. 
; v u Mr. Comstock declares that, in prosecuting Woodhull and 
Claflin, he has never moved in collusion with Mr. Beecher. 
In spite of the habit of tongue necessary to his vocation, he 
probabby tells the truth : Mr. Beecher has acted, Yrom the 
first, through his friends. But one of the affidavits on which 
the arrest of the two women was procured, was made by one 
Taliesin William Rees, a clerk in the office of the Independ- 
ent: and that Mr. Henry C. Bowen, the proprietor of that 
journal, might be trusted to act for Mr. Beecher, (when he 
could save himself b} r the same industry,) will be quite evident 
by-and-by to the ' gentle reader ' of the Thunderbolt. Is it not 
known that the scheme was planned in Mr. Bowen's office — 
spies being thence dispatched to Woodhull and Claflin to 
biry papers and order them sent to certain persons by post? 
On receipt of the papers Mr. A. J. Comstock made his com- 
plaint before Commissioner Osborn, and the women were 
arrested. They were in a carriage at the time, and claimed to 
liave been hunting up the officials who had come for them. 
\ " As the charge against them w r as a fraud, born of a plot, and 
as the}', if no one else, had brains enough to know it, they 
naturally supposed it could soon be broken. But in this opin- 
ion tltey measured only the justice of law itself, not the powers 
of a mob, called ' public opinion,' which renders American law 
useless on so many important occasions. The United States 
Government, however, treated Woodhull and Claflin with 
endearing familiarity. It sat in their lap on the way to court, 
through the supreme gallantry of Marshall Colfax or Bern- 
hard — one of the two Chesterfields who had them in charge. 
It then hurried them, not into open court, but into a side room 
where the ' examination ' might be private. In this ' star cham- 



NEW TORE PAPERS MUZZLED. 53 

ber' they met five persons — District Attorney Noah Davis, ' a 
member of Plymouth Church and a family connection of Mr. 
Beeciier ;' Assistant District Attorney- Gen. Davies, Commis- 
sioner Osborn, and two other gentlemen, one of these being 
also a member of Plymouth Church. But the ' brazen sisters ' 
sent for counsel ; and, insisting on being conducted to the 
proper court-room, their examination was finally held in public. 
In this examination the prosecuting blunderer, Gen. Davies, 
let out the secret that Woodhull and Claflin were not mere- 
ly guilty of ' circulating obscene literature,' but of a ' gross, 
libel ' on a ' gentleman ' whose character it was ' well worth the' 
while of the government of the United States to vindicate-.') 
Interpreted, this lingo meant that a United States Court had; 
been procured to convict, on the pretense of obscenity, two N 
women who had libeled a man — this man declining to protect, 
himself, except through a conspiracy of his friends and'- 1 
lackeys. 

" This ' hol} r show ' of American jurisprudence took place on,' 
Saturday the 2d of Nov., 1872, and was finally adjourned to, 
the ensuing Monday, the prisoners being held to bail in eight! 
thousand dollars each, with two sureties. But when Monday' 
came the Beecher tools of the United States Courts dodged a\ 
further examination altogether. By an unheard-of proceeding,! 
the grand jury had pushed in an indictment wiiich took the 
case out of Commissioner Osborn's jurisdiction. The motive 
was evident ; Mr. Beecher's Gen. Davies had found that his'. 
owner could never be persuaded or dragged into court to pur- 1 
sue Woodhull for her ' gross libel,' and that the charge of 
4 obscenity ' was a most ruinous one to try, if Plymouth Church; 
had any further desire to save its Bible. For b} r far the most. 
' indecent passage ' in Woodhull and Clajlin's Weekly had been. 
cut out of the divinely inspired book of Deuterononry. By 1 , 
this indictment, however, the prisoners were remanded to jail 
in utter disgrace, the mob of piety and fashion was appeased, \ 
and the Young Men's Christian Association was sustained in' 
fraud ! 

" So much done, it was only necessary to muzzle the New; 
York newspapers, (some of whose editors had strong personal 
reasons for dreading ' black-mailers ' if not ' free-lovers,') and 
to bribe or cheat the Associated Press into sending lies by 
lightning throughout the country. Both feats w 7 ere performed. 
A consultation of leading quills adopted darkness and false- 
hood as a deliberate policy; and as for our ' country press,' 



54: GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN. 

that never dares to sneeze unless the metropolitan nose is 
crammed with snuff. The telegraph even prated about the 
finding of ' immodest cartoons ; ' and on the 4th of November 
the credulous public actually supposed that two women, claim- 
ing to be ' reformers,' were guilty of the meanest offence in the 
calendar of shame. The ablest lawyer in the United States 
has since given an opinion scouting the whole arraignment, 
and of course the parties will never be tried, much less con- 
victed. But, on a second arrest, they were taken before 
another United States Commissioner, — Davenport, — who was 
obliged to make some appearance of a ' decision/ And that 
fearful and wonderful thing was this : — ■ 

" As to the intention of Congress in the framing and passage of the statute 
under which these proceedings were instituted, I am clear that a case of this 
character was never contemplated. * * However * * I am disposed to, and 
shall hold, the prisoners. 

" And for this " decision," the Commissioner declared there 
was no American precedent, but that an " English case " fur- 
nished one.' 

" From Commissioner Davenport's ruling there is just one 
logical deduction : — that this faithful servant of Her Majesty, 
the Queen of Great Britain, should be swiftly retired from the 
American Bench, and sent where his English decisions may be 
rendered in English courts.' 

" I have dwelt upon the dry details of law, and in the miser- 
able company of its New York expounders, to show be\ T ond a 
doubt that the ridiculous proceedings against Woodhull and 
Claflin were simply the work of a virtual mob. And in our 
" commercial metropolis " — the great city of this Beeciier-Com- 
stock rabble — there was only one notable man with brains and 
pluck enough to care nothing about persons, and to look only 
at principles. In an age of Daniel Drew, " Jim " Fisk, and 
Phelps, Dodge & Co., that man is naturally deemed " in- 
sane." I refer to George Francis Train. This " lunatic " 
instantly perceived the vast public dangers that loomed up in 
a conspiracy by which the Church might shut the mouth of 
slanderers or truth-tellers alike, disembowel literature, and stay 
the march of humanity itself. 

" Beecher must have justice," said Train : " So must Mr, 
Tvlton — so must the sisters Claflin." 

To these women he said : — 



THE TRAIN LIGUE. 55 

"'Never approving your doctrine of Free Love, I fought you out of the 
Woman-Suffrage movement and the International when you were in prosperity : 
but now you are in adversity I am your friend." 

" From his hotel (the St. Nicholas) he instantly wrote them 
a note : — 

" ' I will go your bail. I am satisfied the cowardly christian community 
will destroy you, if possible, to cover up the rotten state of society." 

" Events have since proved that the " mad cap," George 
Francis Train, was the one greatly sound mind in New York. 
In spite of the momentous principles at stake, it soon became 
evident (as I have already shown) that the great " churches of 
commerce " and the Young Men's Christian Association were 
in league with the greedy, corrupt press of the city, and that 
all had joined hands to deceive the nation. Not even a public 
hall could be secured by Mr. Train, to speak in. He, too, was 
gagged ! It was in this exasperating state of affairs that he 
took desperate measures, and issued a newspaper of his own — 
The Train Ligue. He rung a score of changes on the expres- 
sions called "obscene" in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. He 
flung them into the streets of the city, and dared the authorities 
to arrest him. He demanded the prosecution of the Bible Pub- 
lishing Company for printing " disgusting slanders 071 Lot, Abra- 
ham, Solomon and David" But the Government footboys of 
Mr. A. J. Comstock had become timid and wary. Thej T let 
Train alone, while the cords were drawn more tightly still 
around Woodhull and Claflin. In unspeakable disgust Mr. 
Train then issued his Second Train Ligue, in which he scattered 
about the most shocking parts of the Old Testament, under the 
most audacious of sensational heads, but used no doubtful 
words except those having the authority of the Bible itself. The 
work was a coarse one. Only a thorough " Pagan Preacher" 
could have done it. It seemed revolting and blasphemous ; and 
my own first impression was that Train should be punished for 
it. But better aware now r of the provocation, I have no doubt 
that history will justify the Train Ligue as the natural reaction 
of Comstock's idioc^y, anc ^ as a l as t democratic test of absolute 
religious equality. Mr. Train was finally arrested by the State, 
not the United States authorities, and after the latter had 
declined to touch him. He was thrown into the Tombs. He 
pleaded guilty to " quoting obscenity from the Bible," and 
refused to leave the Tombs on bail. The Church and the 
Young Men's Christian Association, again, dared not risk a 



56 MBS. DAVIS 9 LETTER. 

trial — which would either justify Woodhull and Traix or else 
convict the Bible. In such straits, the Beech er-Bowen-Com- 
stock traitors have attempted at last to end their conspiracy 
by sending George Francis Train to a " lunatic asylum." 

To oppose these assassins of liberty is now the highest duty 
that God gives me to see. I would help do it, if necessary, 
with battle and blood. I will first do what I can with ink and 
t} T pes — going back to the cause of the struggle, the Beecher- 
Tilton Scandal. I said that Victoria C. Woodhull's account 
of it is " at once a truth and a falsehood." As for Theodoke 
Tilton's " true stor}^," long since promised to the public, that 
also shall now be judged. 

In a criticism of my own, from which I have already quoted, 
I said, two months ago, that Mrs. Woodhull's statement must be 
accepted as substantial^ true ; for, of the six persons on whose 
authority it was told, not one had uttered a word of direct 
denial. I have now in my possession two letters from Mrs. 
Paulina Wright Davis — both dated at Paris, one the 20th of 
November and the other the 28th — showing that I was mis- 
taken. But a mere extract from one of these letters had been 
set afloat in the newspapers, and had at last become so tortured 
b} T a change of names that, as I saw it, I knew it must be either 
a falsehood or a forgery. Mrs. Dayis first letter is this : — 

Paris, Nov. 20th. 
To Judge 

Dear Friend : — Yours, with its astounding contents, is just received. Thanks 
for your consideration. 

In relation to the Tilton versus Beecher affair I have only this to say; I 
was never on any terras of intimacy in the family of either party. I never 
visited at Mr. Tilton's but once in my life, and that was ten years ago, in 
company with Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. A year or two since I called at Mr. 
Tilton's house for some books I had lent Mr. Tilton. I-then saw Mrs. 
Tilton for ten or fifteen minutes. I have met Mrs. Tilton two or three times 
at the houses of mutual friends, but at no time has there ever been the 
slightest approach to a confidential conversation between us. Nor have I ever 
even insinuated that there had been. If Mrs. T. has ever, in my presence, 
spoken of Mr. Beecher, it has been in terms of respect as a man of honor and 
her pastor. 

I did believe that V. C. Woodhull was going to do a great work for woman. 
I am grieved that she has failed in what she gave promise of doing. 

I am writing in great haste, and must be very brief, that my letter may go 



MRS. DA VIS' LETTER. 57 

to England to-night by a friend, and so reach you at the earliest hour, and set 
your miud at rest that I could never have originated or spread this scandal. 

Yours very truly, 

P. W Davis. 

" According to ' the Woodhull,' she received a letter from 
Mrs. Davis in May, 1871, in which Mrs. D. said : 

" ' I believe you are raised up of God to do a wonderful work, and I believe 
you will unmask the hypocrisy of a class that none others dare touch. God 
help you and save you. The more I think of that mass of Beecher corruption 
the more 1 desire its opening.' 

" In Mrs. Davis' second note from Paris, she refers to her 
letter from which Mrs. Woodhull claimed to have taken this 
extract, and says : 

" ' The reference in my letter I do not remember ; but, if there, it was in 
allusion to statements made by them to me. But I think it was not there.' 

"As far, then, as Woodhull has given Mrs. Paulina 
Wright Davis for authority in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal, 
she is fairly and flatly denied. 

" The position, however, of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
is quite different. At Lewiston, Me., she undoubtedly ' de- 
nounced ' Mrs. Woodhull' s story, as the newspapers declared 
at the time ; and Theodore Tilton holds a letter from her, in 
which she declines to stand in the precise attitude portraj T ed 
by Mrs. Woodhull. Yet an excellent lady, whose letter I 
have traced to its source, declared in the Hartford Times soon 
after Mrs. Stanton w r as interviewed in Maine, that she 'had 
charged Mr. Beecher, to parties residing in Philadelphia and 
known to the correspondent, with very much the same offence 
of which Mrs. Woodhull speaks.' This testimony is con- 
firmed by Edward M. Davis, Esq., the disciple and son-in-law 
of the venerable Lucretia Mott, and by Mrs. Amelia Bloom- 
er, who asserts that Mrs. Stanton whispered the scandal to 
her ' a year and a half ago,' and said ' the Woodhull knew 
all about it.' At Rochester, not long since, Mrs. Stanton 
publicly refused to deny anything ; and, last of all, she has 
recently sent to me, through a mutual friend, this w r ord : ' As- 
sure Mr. Clark that I care more for justice than for Beecher.' 
Mrs. Stanton, in short, has been somewhat perverted by Wood- 
hull, and denies the perversion. And now, Theodore Tilton's 
letter to his ' complaining friend :' — one of the strangest 
epistles on record, and one which every careful reader was 
3* 



58 TO MY " COMPLAINING FRIEND." 

immediately obliged to regard as a negative confession of much 
that Mrs. Wooclhull had asserted. 

" * 174 Livingstone Street, Brooklyn, Dec. 27th, 1872. — My Complaining 
Friend : Thanks for your good letter of bad advice. You say, ' How easy to 
give the lie to the wicked story, and thus end it forever.' But stop and con- 
sider. The story is a whole library of statements — a hundred or more, — and 
it would be strange if some of them were not correct, though I doubt if any 
are. To give a general denial to such an encyclopedia of assertions would be 
as vague and irrelevant as to take up the Police Gazette, with its twenty-four 
pages of illustrations, and say, ' This is all a lie.' So extensive a libel requires 
(if answered at all) a special denial of its several parts; and, furthermore, it 
requires, in this particular case, not only a denial of things mistated, but a 
truthful explanation of other things that remain unstated and in mystery. In 
other words, the false story (if met at all) should be confronted and con- 
founded by the true one. Now, my friend, you urge me to speak ; but when 
the truth is a sword, God's mercy sometimes commands it sheathed. If you 
think I do not burn to defend my wife and little ones, you know not the fiery 
spirit within me. But my wife's heart is more a fountain of charity, and 
quenches all resentments. She says : ' Let there be no suffering save to our- 
selves alone,' and forbids a vindication to the injury of others. From the 
beginning she has stood with her hand on my lips saying 'Hush ! ' So when 
you prompt me to speak for her, you countervail her more Christian mandate 
of silence. Moreover, after all, the chief victim of the public displeasure is 
myself alone ; and so long as this is happily the case, I shall try, with patience, 
to keep my answer within my own breast, lest it shoot forth like a thunder- 
bolt through other hearts. 

Yours truly, 

Theodore Tilton.' 

" Mr. Tilton's ' thunderbolt ' has come ! I have tapped the 
mysterious cloud in which it lay sheathed ; and if it now 
4 shoots ' through any 4 hearts,' let their owners remember the 
danger of conspiring against the most sacred rights of an 
American citizen ! 

" I will remark, at this point, that the defense which Mr. 
Tilton prepared against Mrs. Woodhull, — which he indirect- 
ly promised to the public, and then 4 concluded to withhold,' — 
is a thick, heavy pile of manuscript, written on foolscap, and 
bound in flexible black leather. It has every appearance of 
elaboration, — being erased in parts and rewritten, — and is very 
circumstantial. How this 'true story' came into my posses- 
sion is of no consequence to the public, but can easily be 



TILTON' S " TR UE STOR Y." 59 

ascertained in the courts, if an}' of the specially interested 
parties should have the temerity to press an investigation. I 
shall give the substance of it, but as briefly as possible, and 
chiefly, though not wholly, in my own language. Here, then, 
is Theodore Tilton's 'true story.' 

" He asserts that, in the fall of 1870,— Mrs. Tilton having 
just returned to her home from a watering-place, — she was 
visited by Mr. Beeoher ; and that on this occasion the pastor 
of Plymouth Church unbridled his fiery passions, and besought 
of Mrs. Tilton the most intimate relationship accorded b} T sex. 
Such warmth of pastoral attention was declined by Mrs. Til- 
ton — not with the loud anger of ostentatious virtue, but with 
the mature sadness of common sense. The good lady was 
surprised, and the true wife reported the occurrence to her 
husband. Greatly angered and grieved, he requested her to 
make a memorandum of it. She did so : — and I give her own 
words, literally, as they were written. 

" ' Yesterday afternoon my friend and pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, solicited 
me to become his wife in all the relations which that term implies.' 

"In his manuscript-book Mr. Tilton comments, with some 
evidence of pride, upon the delicate and skillful manner in 
which Mr. Beecher's hideous overtures were here expressed. 
Mrs. Tilton's language is striking, and is apt to impress itself 
on the reader's memory. 

" At the time Mrs. Tilton's memorandum was written, Mr. 
Tilton was the editor of the New York Independent and of 
the Brooklyn Union, receiving $5,000 a year from each of 
these sources, and about $5,000 more from still another source, 
and was in most intimate business relations with Mr. Henry 0. 
Bowen, the eminent publisher, and a fellow-member of Plym- 
outh Church. As Mr. Tilton was writing his i true stoiy,' he 
could hardly be blamed for a yearning look backward at those 
halcyon days of the Bowen flesh-pots. 

" About six weeks after Mr. Beecher's pastoral interview 
with Mrs. Tilton, the nature of it was explained by Mr. Tilton 
to his friend and patron, Mr. Bowen. The confidence w r as 
natural ; for Mr. Tilton affirms that, during a whole previous 
year, Mr. Bowen had been denouncing Mr. Beecher as ' a cor- 
rupter of Brooktyn societ}-,' and charging him, in unmistakable 
terms, with ' numerous adulteries and rapes.' Mr. Tilton just- 
ifies his own terrible statement, at this juncture, by the affidavit 
of another gentleman, (whose name has thus far been kept out 



60 NOTE OF ADVICE AND DEMAND. 

of the scandal,) but who swears that on two occasions he had 
heard Mr. Bowen impute these crimes to Mr. Beecher. Again, 
during a Summer respite at his country-seat in Woodstock, 
Conn., Mr. Bowen had written a letter to Mr. Tilton, condem- 
ning Mr. Beecher more severely than ever, and bitterly accus- 
ing himself of infidelity to his own conscience in having so long 
delayed an exposure of so base a scoundrel. He added that 
he should publish Beecher's guilt on returning to the city. 
Mr. Bowen failed to keep the promise ; but he still vented his 
indignation in private to Mr. Tilton, who finally unbosomed 
the story of his own household. 

" Thereupon Mr. Bowen became unusually excited. He said 
the time had come to act. He urged Mr. Tilton to write in- 
stantly to Mr. Beecher, demanding his retirement from Ply- 
mouth Church and his withdrawal from Brooklyn. ' Write that 
letter,' exclaimed Mr. Bowen, ' and let me carry it to the scoun- 
drel for you.' Impelled by such eloquent friendship, Mr. Til- 
ton says he wrote the following note : 

" ' Henry Ward Beecher, Sir : — For reasons which you will understand, 
and which I need not therefore recite, I advise and demand that you quit 
Plymouth pulpit forever, and leave Brooklyn as a residence. 

Theodore Tilton.' 

" The note was then handed to Mr. Bowen, according to his 
vehement solicitation, for delivery to Mr. Beecher. 

" In Mrs. Woodhull's account of the Beecher-Tilton 
Scandal, she cites a Mr. Frank Moulton as one of her wit- 
nesses. This gentleman's name appears also in Mr. Tilton's 
manuscript-book. He is a member of Plymouth Church. He 
has long been Mr. Tilton's most intimate friend. He was 
called into the difficulty at the very first step. A day or two 
after Mr. Beecher's visit to Mrs. Tiltont in the coveted light 
of a 4 wife,' Mr. Tilton consulted Mr. Moulton, it appears, and 
placed Mrs. Tilton's memorandum in his hands. And now, 
after sending the note of c advice and demand ' to Mr. Beecher, 
Mr. Tilton imparted the circumstance to Mr. Moulton. 

" ; But, Tilton,' said Mr. Moulton at once, ' did Bowen sign 
that letter with you? 9 

" i No/ replied Mr. Tilton, 4 1 signed it alone.' 

" ' Then you are a ruined man ! ' 

" How Mr. Frank Moulton acquired 4 the gift of prophecy,' 
we need not pause to inquire. But that he understands the 
i pillars ' of Plymouth Church, was soon proved. For when 



BEECUER A GENTLEMAN AND A CHRISTIAN. 61 

Mr. Tilton's friend, Bowen, reached Brooklyn Heights with 
the letter which he had so earnestly requested him to bear to 
' that scoundrel, Beecher,' he certainly delivered it with remark- 
able suavity, under the circumstances. Said he, 

"'Mr. Beecher — a letter from Tilton. Tilton is your implacable enemy, 
Mr. Beecher, but I will be your friend.' 

" It is unnecessary, perhaps, to explain Mr. H. C. Bowen's 
motive in this unparalleled act of ' strategy,' not to say treach- 
ery. But not long afterward it became known to the ' news- 
paper world ' that Mr. Bowen had concluded to dispense with 
the services of Mr. Tilton on the Independent. To kill off a 
useless friend, and at the same time grapple a useful enemy 
with ' hooks of steel,' is sometimes an object to a shrewd man 
of business. 

" Some eight months after the commencement of the Beecit- 
er-Tilton differences, an investigation and a storm were thought 
to be brooding over Plymouth Church ; and Mr. Beecher, fear- 
ing that Mrs. Tilton's memorandum (which he had heard of) 
might be brought to light, made bold to visit her in Mr. Tilton's 
absence. Although informed that she was sick in bed, he 
insisted on seeing her, and was finally admitted to her room. 
Mr. Tilton's ' true story' declares that the great preacher drew 
a doleful picture of his troubles. He pleaded with Mrs. Tilton 
that he was on the brink of ruin, and that she alone could save 
him. Mrs. Tilton finally sat up in bed, with book and paper 
in hand, and wrote at Mr. Beeciier's dictation a few lines, the 
point of which is that in all his intercourse with her he i had 
conducted himself as a gentleman and a Christian.' Flushed 
with success, the Plymouth shepherd then pressed her to add 
that the troublesome memorandum in Moulton's hands had 
been wrested from her when she was '?7Z,' and in ' an irrespon* 
sible condition.' She gave an oral promise also, as Mr. Tilton 
adds, that she would not appear against Mr. Beecher in any 
coming investigation, unless her husband should move in the 
matter. In ' the Woodhull's scandal, she speaks of Mrs. 
Tilton's ' sweet concessiveness.' Much of it seems also evi- 
dent in Mr. Tilton's ' true story.' 

"On Mr. Tilton's return home, Mrs. Tilton again told him 
what had happened. He assures the reader that he would now 
have borne the humility of his wife's merciful retraction, had it 
not been for the concluding portion, which apparently placed 
him in the position of having compelled her to indite her first 



62 INTER VIEW BETWEEN MO ULTON AND BEECHER. 

memorandum. Mr. Tilton's proud spirit, outraged at the pos- 
sibility of this appearance of vulgar malice on his part — or even 
black-mail itself — had resource at once to his unfailing social 
strategist, Mr. Moulton. He urged Mr. Moulton to hasten 
to Mr. Beecher, and force him to give up Mrs. Tilton's last 
paper. 

" Mr. Moulton went ; and he had a long private conference 
with his beloved pastor. He requested and insisted that the 
document should be given up. Among other things, he re- 
minded Mr. Beecher that the statement which he had just 
worried out of Mrs. Tilton was false on its face — as the lady 
was known to have been not ' ill ' and - in an irresponsible con- 
dition ' when her original memorandum was made, bid uncom- 
monly well, as Mr. Beecher remembered, — she having just 
returned home from a summer resort. Mr. Moulton further 
elucidated to his minister that Mrs. Tilton was noiv ' ill' and in 
an 'irresponsible condition,' instead of on the former occasion. 

"Mr. Moulton's persuasions were not easily answered, 
though Mr. Beecher still held on to the paper. As the discus- 
sion sharpened, however, and Mr. Moulton evinced that he 
was not to be trifled with, Mr. Beecher finally asked him what 
he would do with the paper if it should be placed in his hands. 
' / will keep the first memorandum and this one together,' said 
Mr. Moulton, - and thus prevent you and Til ton from harming 
each other.' 

" ' But,' said Mr. Beecher, imploringly, - Frank, can I, can 
/confide in 3011? Will 3*011 protect the paper?' 

" ' Yes,' was the reply ; - nobody shall have it ; I will take 
care of it.' 

" ' How?' asked Mr. Beecher. 

" ' In eveiy way,' answered Mr. Moulton ; and then, putting 
his hand on a pistol in his vest pocket, he added; ' with this, if 
necessary." 

" Mr. Beecher thereupon gave up the document, and Mr. 
Moulton has faithfully kept his promise. But he returned at 
once to Mr. Tilton, and made a full, circumstantial record of 
the conference with Mr. Beecher. This record was written in 
short-hand, but was afterwards rendered into ordinary English, 
and it now occupies several pages of Mr. Tilton's ' true story,' 
and is highly dramatic reading. 

" In due time Mr. Tilton became acquainted with Mrs. 
Woodhull. He says he had previously declined an introduc- 
tion to her ; but met her accidentally one da}' in company with 



WOODHULL ffl A TRANCE. 63 

a mutual friend, and was presented to her. He afterward 
visited her at times, as did most of the other men and women 
in New York who were connected with the Woman Suffrage 
movement. On one occasion of a visit at her office she sud- 
denly seized a copy of the World, and, thrusting it before him, 
pointed to this passage in a letter she had written to that 
journal : — 

" ' I know a clergyman of eminence in Brooklyn, who lives in concubinage 
with the wife of another clergyman of equal eminence. 

" Mr Tilto^,' said Woodhull, ' do you know whom that 
means? ' ' No.' ' It means you and Mr. Beecher.' 

" Mr. TiLTOisr claims that he said nothing, or almost nothing 
in reply ; but was simply thunder-struck. He instantly per- 
ceived that the woman had heard, in an exaggerated form, 
rumors that had been traveling about for a year or two, and he 
feared that, in her possession, they might become very danger- 
ous. He soon left Mrs. Woodhull, and sought, of course, 
the Napoleonic Moulton". The result was the deliberate plan 
of a campaign to get thoroughly on the right side of Woodhull, 
keep there, and thus close her mouth. He then called upon 
her frequently — sometimes in company with MoULTOlsr, some- 
times alone, took her pai>t publicly, and defended her character. 
He sometimes saw her in such exaltations as he considered 
states of trance, and her husband in affinity, Col. Blood, used 
to read him extracts from the heavens, which Victoria was 
said to have received (often the night before) from the ' spirits.' 
Mr. TiLTON" does not deny that he honestly considered Mrs. 
Woodhull a remarkable woman, with a 4 mission ;' and, if mis- 
taken, he naturally contends that Mr. Beechek, his sister, Mrs. 
Hooker, Mrs. Stanton and many others ' trained in the same 
regiment ' of erring mortality. 

" On statements furnished by Mrs. Woodhull and Col. 
Blood, Mr. Tilton finally made the last bold stroke to win 
the undjdng gratitude of 44 Broad Street, by giving his name 
and the literary finish of his pen to the ' Biography of Victo- 
ria C. Woodhull.' He was mistaken, he now thinks, in that 
person. With 'the Woodhull' ' gratitude ' is nothing, ' prin- 
ciple ' everything; and principle, in her case as in Vandkii- 
bilt's, is to 'carry a point.' Mr. Tilton had a terrible 
warning of this phase of her character, when some of his lady- 
acquaintances and special friends deemed it necessary, in the 
early part of 1872, to disown Mrs, Woodhull in the arena of 



64 THE DA T OF JUDGMENT. 

Woman's Rights, on account of her social doctrines. The 
Woodhull instantly flanked the movement by sending the 
ladies printed slips of their own private histories, (in an arti- 
cle called ' Tit for Tat '), declaring that if they should disgrace 
her for teaching ' social freedom,' she would print the article in 
her Weekly, and they should sink loith her for practicing the 
theory. This generalship may be defended b} T the old proverb 
that 4 any thing is fair in love and war ; ' but such a blow 
'under the belt' was severely rebuked by Mrs. Stanton, and 
was regarded with reasonable terror by Mr. Tilton. He now 
became fully conscious of Mrs. Woodhull's capacity of de- 
struction, and retired completely from her circle. The impend- 
ing ' crack of doom ' was not to be hushed up with ' gratitude/ 
Mr. Tilton had himself confided the substance of his ' true 
story ' toMrs. Woodhull, and knew that so much of his fate 
was in her hands. Still, he affirms that he was astonished be- 
yond measure when she at last magnified it into the unearthly 
proportions of the Beecher-Tilton Scandal. 

" Such is a careful summary of that ' true story ' which The- 
odore Tilton said he should try to keep within his own 
breast. 

" As far as Mr. Beecher is concerned, it will instantly be 
seen that his virtue, at best, is not always the inclination of his 
own will. If Mrs. Woodhull has misrepresented him, and 
Mr. Tilton has turned her falsehood into truth, still it was 
only through Mr. BEECHER's/aiYwe in carrying out an immoral 
purpose that Mrs. Woodhull's story is not correct. A corres- 
pondent of the Cincinnati Commercial — who has evidently been 
admitted into some of the secrets of Mr. Tiltojv's foolscap vol- 
ume, and at the same time employed to whitewash Mr. Beecher 
— declares that the ' true story ' embraces ' a period of ten 
years,' implicates ' persons who have not public^ figured in it/ 
and ' elucidates some things not likely to be known till the Day 
of Judgment.' 

" These stilted phrases have some foundation, though it 
would not be difficult for so plain a man as myself to bring 
that ' Da} T of Judgment ' close to hand, if necessaiy . I have 
no wish, however, to drag an} r cringing mortal before the public 
in mere wantonness, — especialty any ivoman. I regard Mr. 
Henry C. Bowen as Mr. Beecher's chief ' supe' and conspir- 
ator, in combining with that wretched Jesuit of Protestantism, 
Mr. Anthony J. Comstock, to violate American liberty. 
From my position, Mr. Bowen deserves no mercy beyond the 



MRS. MORRIS CIRCULATES THE SCANDAL. 65 

bare truth. In regard to other persons, I think the public have 
no special interest in them, with one exception. As I view the 
whole case, in all its bearings, I deem it right to say that Mr. 
Tiltost claims that he has always been violently hated by his 
wife's mother, Mrs. Morris — a "lady who is definitely repre- 
sented to me as insane. 

" This poor lady is said to have circulated, for many years, 
the most damaging reports against the character of her daugh- 
ter, and against Mr. Beecher and Mr. Tiltost. The earliest 
scandals concerning Mrs. TlLTON and the Plymouth pastor are 
said to have proceeded from her. I must add, also, that a long 
time ago there were rumors, among the special acquaintances 
of the parties, that Mrs. Tiltont was subject to the hallucination 
that some of Mr. Beech er's children were those of her own 
household. (But Mr. Tilton's narrative affords me no hint of 
this rumor.) 

" And now what conclusion is to be drawn from Mr. Til- 
ton's 'thunderbolt' on one hand, and Mrs. Woodhull's 
vaunted ' bombshell ' on the other ? I am sorry to say I have 
little confidence in the strict veracity of either account. 

" As for ' the Woodhull,' there can be no doubt that she 
has belied Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis completely. This excel- 
lent lady did believe, to use her own language, ' that V. C. 
Woodhull was going to do a great work for woman,' and in 
that belief Mrs. Davis encouraged her by word and deed. 
About a year ago Mrs. Davis went to Europe ; and as late as 
May of 1872, she seems to have retained an affectionate regard 
for Mrs. Woodhull. It is supposed that when ' the Woodhull ' 
printed her slips to use against those select advocates of Wom- 
an's Rights who wished to push her aside, one of the slips was 
sent abroad to Mrs. Davis ; for Mrs. Woodhull has since pub- 
lished a letter (thought to be genuine) which can only be ex- 
plained by some such cause. Here it is : 

" ' My dear Victoria : Driven to bay at last, you have turned, poor 
hunted child, and dealt a cruel blow on the weak instruments of men — 
such men as the editors of the Herald, Tribune, Sun, etc. Every one of 
the women you name has been hounded by these men, and now that it suits 
them, they make cat's-paws of them to hunt you. The first time I ever 
saw Mrs. Phelps I was told by a man that she was a woman of damaged 
reputation. T. W. Higginson said the same thing of Mrs. Blake in a 
meeting of ladies in Providence. I was urged to avoid these women, but 
it was not for me to make war on any one who would work for woman's 



m MRS. DA VIS CONTRADICTS WOODHULL. 

freedom. They have not stood by me in my faith in you. But, dear child, 
I wish you had let them pass, and had taken hold of those men whose souls 
are black with crimes and who set up to be the censors of morality. They 
should be torn from their throne of the judgment of woman's morals, and 
made to shrink from daring to utt^r one word against any woman as 
long as they withhold justice from her. Men are the chief scandal-mongers 
of the age : it is they who import all the vile scandals of New York here, 
and so make society detestable. You are not befooled by them, hence you 
must be crucified. God in His mercy pity you and give you grace, strength 
and wisdom, to do your work aright. But do not again take hold of the 
"cat's-paws:" excoriate the monkeys, the scandal-mongers, the base' 
hearted, cowardly betrayers of woman's confidence and honor. Give woman 
a fair field of equality, and then if she is weak, wicked and mean, let her 
bear her share of the odium. 

Ever yours, 

Paulina Wright Davis. 
Florence, Italy, May, 1872. 

This letter, — which I consider worthy the head and heart of 
any woman that ever lived, — commits Mrs. Davis to the cause 
of social fair-play in the broadest sense. She has no fear, 
surely, for the " face of man ;" and, as one man, I always take 
off my hat to such a woman. Yet Mrs. Davis flatly contradicts 
Mrs. Woodhull, and declares that if she ever spoke to her of 
the " Beecher-Tiltok Scandal," she relied simply on Mrs. 
Woodhull's own declarations. 

Mrs. Stanton", again, has now said enough to show that she 
considers her conversation with Woodhull to have been 
warped, if nothing more, and stuffed out for dramatic effect. 
Then Theodore Tilton denies " the Woodhull " — that is, 
when the letter to his " complaining friend " finds interpretation 
at last in the Thunderbolt. 

"This complaining friend is Col. James B. Mix, a well- 
known journalist long connected with the Tribune — a gentle- 
man who has undoubtedly read Mr. Tilton's "true story," 
and who has since rebuked him severely for not fulfilling his 
declared intention to publish it. In the Chicago Times of Feb- 
ruary 28th, Col. Mix has the one remarkable letter, as far as 
any hint of hidden facts is concerned, that the Beecher-Woqe- 
Hi'LL excitement has thus far produced. The rest are either 
thick lamp-black or else thin whitewash. First explaining his 
position in connection with Mr. Tilton, Col. Mix says : — 

" We never expected again to put pen to paper in this matter. But 



COL. MIX SPEAKS. 67 

since you, Theodore Tilton, stand trembling with your written statement 
in your hand, we deem it an act of friendship to give you that spur which 
shall start you on the stern path of duty. * * * * One would sup- 
pose that the Christian Church was founded with the birth of the reverend 
gentleman who is principally concerned, so mealy-mouthed are the blind 
idolators who worship at the shrine of Plymouth. * * * For years the 
6word of Damocles has been suspended above his platform, and yet he has 
never flinched. One miscreant among his congregation has, figuratively 
speaking, been shaking the finger of guilt at him for years. * * People 
ask why has Mr. Beecher not said, ' This is all a lie.' It is only a little 
band of dear friends who know of the efforts that have been made during 
th-e past winter to shield Mr. Beecher from the parasites that have sur- 
rounded him, and who now feel that every honorable effort having availed 
nothing, he must meet the blow. 

Col. Mix — impersonating Diogenes, out with his lantern to 
look for an honest man — next addresses Mr. Beecher directly : 

"Why was it that you desired that your protege should read you his 
written statement, which he did but a few nights since at the house of a 
mutual friend? Why was it necessary for you to correspond with 'the 
Woodhull? ' If she is the vile wretch they say she is; and if the letters 
you have from her contain any thing but the woman's inmost thoughts ; 
any thing that can be construed into a threat; any thing that will bear the 
construction of black-mail, why not give them to the world, so that those 
who love you for your great talents and the good you have accomplished 
in the world, may breathe freer? Why was it that she and you were 
together on the Heights, Nov. 19th, 1871, except it was that she then 
expected you to make your ' new departure,' and become the high priest 
of that peculiar sect of which she is the champion? What mysterious influ- 
ence was it that she then possessed over you, that you allowed her to dare to 
propose that you should introduce her at Steinway Hall. Was it her 
pure unadulterated cheek, or did she know ' who was who f ' Certain it 
was that she was not dismayed ; and she nerved your pupil to do that from 
which you shrank. 

" Did not one of the noblest of men * open wide for you another field of 
usefulness? * * But, alas! Mammon again claimed you. * * The 
auctioneer was again on hand, and one by one the most conspicuous spots, 
were secured. * * Why was it that your sister, Harriet, Sunday after 
Sunday, sat at your feet? Was it that another sister, more impulsive, had 
threatened to mount your platform and plead your cause? 

"Come to the front and center, Henry Ward Beecher. You are but 
human. * * You have a constituency outside of Plymouth Church, to 



68 THE MODERN ARBACES. 

which they are but a drop in the bucket. In your proper element you can 
unmask the cold-blooded varlets that flaunt their piety on 'Change and in 
the mart. * * Society was organized on a substantial basis, and no 
man or woman can overthrow it. Let us have the truth though the 
heavens fall. Shall it be? Or must a desperate woman be allowed an 
excuse, through the cowardice of those who have communed 
with her, to give to the world that which may sear other hearts, and 
-. tear open, afresh, wounds that are almost healed? 

The immense suggestiveness of this letter, taken in connec- 
tion with its source, supplies all need of excuse for quoting it 
so liberally. It is the only article from the Beecher-Tiltw 
circle that the Woodhull herself has deigned to notice. And 
what remarkable notice ! She sa}*s : — 

"This is but another attempt on the part of the defense, many others of 
different bearing having failed to draw our fire before the turning-point. 
And it will fail, as all others before have failed. * * We shall neither 
be surprised, annoyed or driven into a showing of our hands until the 
right time comes. But when that time shall come, the ' Manricoes, 
* Brooklyns,' ' Vidies ' — the curs who bark at our heels behind nom de 
plumes — * * these, we sav, all these will have good reason to think the 
last trump has sounded ; for we shall then tell the whole truth though the 
heavens do fall, and though, with the rest, we go down in the 

GENERAL RUIN. 

" It is this close, deadly fire, and then the locking of bayo' 
nets, between Col. Mix and the Woodhull, that gives mo 
pause over Mr. Tilton's "true story." — This, and one thing 
more : from Brooklyn I am asked this question : — 

" 'How can Tilton deny even what you say he does? Mrs. Stanton has 

not been his only confidant. My friend, , long ago received from 

him a story that did not so spare his hearthstone. It was Woodhull's 
account, or much like it.' 

" I have greatly admired Mr. Tilton. I have thought him 
a hero, erring, perhaps, but loving, forgiving and abused on 
many sides. But was that " true story " written, after all, on 
purpose to be hidden, and to be sprung, by and by, as a trap, 
on history ? Is it another book by a Bolingbroke, who " loaded 
his gun,"* as Dr. Johnson said, " but dared not fire it, and so 
hired a beggarly Scotchman to pull the trigger after he was 
dead?" 

"But Col. Mix, in his article, makes no scruple of describing 
Mr. Beecher as " The modern Arbaces " — insatiate luxury 



MASTERL T SYSTEM OF TACTICS. 69 

masked in the idol of a god ! The picture is either very care- 
less or else very frightful. He tells ' Arbaces ' that Mrs. Wood- 
hull knew ' who was who/ and 'nerved his pupil to do' that 
from which he 'shrank.' Mr. Tilton's 'complaining friend' 
fears, too, that Mrs. Woodhull ma}' ' senr other hearts, and 
tear open, afresh, wounds that are almost healed.' Then Mrs. 
Woodhull herself assures him that she shall } T et ' tell the whole 
truth, though the heavens do fall,' and though she ' goes down 
with the rest in the general ruin.' Very well : but when those 
heavens crack and tumble, will the Woodhull ' go down ' in 
the arms of ' Arbaces,' or of the ' pupil,' or of both? I have so 
little faith in the chastit} r of Plymouth Church that the two 
brethren may ' toss up a cent' for the benefit of the doubt. 

And now let us glance over the whole field of the Woodhull- 
Beecher battle, pick up the wounded, bury the dead, and look 
all the results straight in the face. 

As far as Mr. Beecher is concerned, the most direct, though 
interested witness, Mr. Tilton, affirms that he is not an adul- 
terer, as charged ; but that, in spite of his eager intentions to 
become one, his virtue was preserved by Mrs. Tilton. 

But Mr. Beecher's method of magnetizing a sick person into 
wTiting down lies for his temporal salvation, is itself as bad as 
a breach of the Seventh Commandment. It marks at once the 
perfidious conspirator. It is the old spirit of David, putting 
Uriah in the ' fore front of the battle.' It justifies eveiy sus- 
picion that leagues Beecher with Bo wen and Comstock, their 
raid on American law and the necessities of human progress. 
No : Plymouth Church may cling to Henry Ward Beecher, ask- 
ing no questions, and both may go to the devil together. But 
he is henceforth on the retired list of great names and honest 
men. ' The Woodhull ' has always claimed that his dead 
silence, as to her, is a ' masterly system of tactics ' — a waiting 
until public sentiment can tide up to his justification in ' social 
freedom.' She may bottle her soothing-syrup. The man has 
no self-sacrifice, much less a bit of aggressive heroism. He is 
not fit to stand even with her in ' reform.' He will rot away in 
a dead church. 

" But he can easily be spared in all other connections. The 
Beecher family has been great in American history. Forty 
years ago Lyman Beecher had power to make even Wendell 
Phillips a Calvinist, though lie prudently excused himself, as a 
shreivd Christian, from joining Garrison and the Abolitionists, 
on the plea that he already had ' too many irons in the fire.' 



70 BEECHER AS AN OR A TOR. 

When the battle for freedom had grown warm, and the ranks 
were pretty well filled, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote ' Uncle 
Tom's cabin,' and Henry Ward Beecher stood vigorously up 
for old John Brown. A grateful country can never forget such 
services. The younger Mr. Beecher, too, has made Puritanism 
as broad as the sons of Puritans would let him; but he has 
ahvays been very careful not to step an inch ahead of assured 
support. Theodore Parker — the one great thinker of the recent 
American pulpit — once spoke of Mr. Beecher's ' deep emotional 
nature, so devout and so humane,' and his ' poetic eloquence 
that is akin to both the sweet-briar and the rose, and all the 
beauty which springs up wild amid New England hills.' No 
thoroughly trained scholar has ever given Mr. Beecher credit 
for any thing more than Theodore Parker described. 

" His mind is loose and uncertain. He has borrowed a great 
deal of ' originality ' from Emerson, mixed it with sentiment 
and theology, and fed it to Plymouth Church. But a profound, 
sj'stematic thinker, like Kant or Hegel, would give him the 
lock-jaw, He is like the recent book ' Ecce Homo,' which fur- 
nished the crude average mind of the day with a new concep- 
tion of Jesus, but was only a pretty toy to real scholars. As 
an orator and actor, however, Henry Ward Beecher has few 
equals ; and like Butler at the bar, or Phillips on the platform, 
Beecher can always bring instantly to the pulpit all that is in 
him. His greatness is his readiness. But when he combines 
with Bowen and Comstock to save a name by endangering a 
nation, it is evident that he has been petted and pampered into 
counting himself a god. When Harriet Beecher Stowe — after 
digging up Byron to brand ' incest ' on the corpse, — holds back 
Isabella Beecher Hooker from admitting her brother's faults, 
the further usefulness of Mrs. Stowe to the world ma} T also be 
questioned. And when at last the author of c Catharine Beech- 
er's Cook Book ' demands that some defunct law shall be un- 
buried to imprison Woodhull without the appearance in court 
of a prosecuting witness, the end has come to an illustrious 
line. ' Assez de Bonaparte,' said France in 1814. America is 
just ready to say : ' Enough of the Beecher sF 

" In estimating Theodore Tilton, I scarcely know what to 
think. He has several letters from Beecher, exalting him as the 
most magnanimous of men and Christians' He would have 
earned these on the supposition that his ' true story ' is not a 
false one, and he would have doubly earned them, certainty, on 
the supposition that the worse version of Woodhull has any 



WOODHULL'S CHARACTER. 71 

truth at all in it. Mr. Tilton has been the most brilliant young 
editor in the United States, though he, too, seems dependent 
on the inspiration of the moment, rather than on any very deep 
centre of thought. He may yet be pushed into showing that 
he has not become rotten before getting ripe. But his silence 
with Beecher, and his patience with Bowen and Comstock, fill 
many who would like to love him with doubt and distrust. 

" And how, finally, shall the thunderbolt fall on ' the Wood- 
hull ' herself? I have never seen the dreaded ogress of Broad 
Street but once — a year or two ago — when I conversed with 
her a few minutes in a public hall. Her sister, Miss Claflin, I 
have never seen at all. But having taken a deep interest in 
great principles victimized through these two women, and hav- 
ing honestly sought nothing but truth in scrutinizing the 
Beecher-Tilton Scandal, this attitude has drawn to me many 
people, and has opened various sources of information on ail 
sides. I know persons who admire Mrs. Woodhull, those who 
hate her, those who think her nature distorted but her work 
necessary, and those who have watched and studied her, with 
the care of detectives, for both public and private purposes. 

On seeing her myself, I said (in the Troy Whig of September 
25th, 1871,) that she struck me as a rapt idealist — " out of her 
head" in the sense of " enthusiasm ; " a nature "so intense 
that she might see visions of angels or devils," and as many as 
St. John or Luther. " Had she been carefully trained from 
childhood," I added, " I must think she would have been a 
wonderful scholar, poet, and thinker. As it is, she is an ab- 
normal growth of democratic institutions, thoroughly sincere, 
partly insane, and fitted to exaggerate great truths." As pre- 
cisely this opinion has been reflected back to me by several 
very acute minds — both men and women — I have no doubt to- 
da} T , that it describes the " Woodhull," in one mood, pretty 
closely. But I know, from facts in my possession, that she 
has other moods, in which she loses her remarkable sweetness 
of voice and all touch of the heavens, to swagger like a pirate 
and scold like a drab. 

This phase of her character has been so conspicuous at 
times, before close judges of human nature, that they regard 
her as an ingrained liar and a complete quack. At one time 
she sinks every vestige of egotism in the absorbed expression 
of ideas ; and at another she would steal the genius of a friend 
to aid her in " putting on airs." It seems as if she loves noto- 
riety more than any other being on earth ; yet she loves her 



72 MORALIZING. 

notions of duty even more than notoriety. She is ignorant ; 
and her strong signatures in letters and on the backs of photo- 
graphs, is commonly the handiwork of Col. Blood. It is 
probable that she never wrote, unaided and alone, any of her 
"great speeches" or her stirring editorials — the " Beecher- 
Tilton Scandal "being no exception. Yet she is the inspira- 
tion, the vitality and the mouthpiece of her clan and "cause." 
Her organ, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly, has voices from 
the "seventh heaven" and the gabbling of a frog-pond. Its 
advertisements are gratuitous "blinds;" and its proprietors 
have lately had the kindness to publish my own circular with- 
out request or leave ; yet the amazing journal is crowded with 
thought, and with needed information that can be got nowhere 
else. And to-day it stands as the test of a free press, and the 
possibility of a better breed of men than now make the city of 
New York a vast immoral improvement on Sodom and 
Gomorrah. Mrs Woodhull, in short, is like Daniel O'Connell, 
as judged by " Bobus Smith ": She ought to be hanged, and 
then have a monument erected to her memory at the foot of 
the gallows. 

Does all this seem like a contradiction or a joke? Very 
likely — to the puny-souled babes, suckled on the dish-water 
that is now-a-days called " religion," " theology," " morality." 
The Sunday-school and the Young Men's Christian Associ- 
ation divide mankind into two classes — the good and the bad. 
But their Jesus said: "There is none good but one — the 
Father; and the Son went down to sympathize with publicans 
and harlots. 

The world should have done, once for all, with expecting to 
find a saint who is all sanctity, or a sinner who is all sin. The 
conception is an old humbug, clasped to the bosom of snobs 
to double their natural hypocrisy. God made the world— 
every thought and every thing — out of two opposites. Phi- 
losophy, in a Hegel, analyzes them into abstracts, calls them 
" being " and " nothing," poses these abstracts in necessary 
evolution, and then synthesises the whole solid world back 
again. Common sense sees the same thing in every human 
being, and calls it good and evil. In strong people, espe- 
cially, it is stiffly mixed. " Every literary man," said Landor, 
" has the spice of a scoundrel in him." The most useful 
American writer, during four or five years of our "Great 
Rebellion," is a natural miser and bummer, and " dead-beat :" 
— and he is my friend, and I love him heartily. If Beech er 



WOODHULL' S EARL T LIFE. 73 

himself would only oe honest, and not try to garrote the pros- 
pects of his race to cover his oion frailties, I could hug him in 
ten minutes. But he prefers the "orthodox" embraces of 
"twenty mistresses" and a few millions of fools. 

But of all incarnate mixtures of Manna and Helebore that 
are now going " to and fro on the earth and walking up and 
down in it," the Woodhull appears to be the most extreme. 
According to her own story (Tilton's biography) she was con- 
ceived in the frenzy of a Methodist revival, and born in a 
treacherous nest of human catamounts. She was marked 
from the womb with preternatural excitement. The baby 
played with ghosts. She dug in the garden with the deviPs 
foot on her spade, to hurry her up. The child of fourteen 
married to please a rake's whim, and lived fifteen years with a 
man she ought to have left in a week. She was a little of 
every thing to earn hard bread — handmaid and shop-girl, 
actress and clairvoyant healer of general aches. What else, 
poor soul, they tell me, is not down in the book. She was 
crushed and cursed in motherhood with an idiot-boy. She 
was taunted with marital fidelity by a husband who was him- 
self the popinjay of strumpets. 

This poor, imp-ridden, heart-burnt woman turned at last 
against the social fate that had crushed her; and, having been 
its manifold victim, she knew all its sores and all its weapons. 
Her treatment of its diseases are new: she cukes seduction 

BY KILLING REPUTATION, AND LANCES ADULTERY WITH A 
" SOCIAL REVOLUTION." 

She is accused of levying black mail, and special detectives 
of Wall street claim to hold indictments against her, hidden 
in their safes. But if such papers were of any effect, when 
New York would pay a million dollars for a legal pretext to 
send the woman to Sing Sing, the detectives must have black- 
mailed somebody for two millions in the interest of burning 
the indictments up. That Mrs. Woodhull is at all "nice in 
business honor, I doubt. Tf she would use the name of Mrs. 
Paulina Wright Davis falsely, to strengthen even an essential 
truth, she would suborn a friend's purse to carry out some 
other " mission." 

But that holy horror should gripe the bowels of the whole 
New York press at the two-penny corruptions of the Woodhull 
and Claflin, is enough to make the memory of Bennett wink 
with its cock-eye. The Herald was born in smut and libel, 
and now keeps a regular assignation-house in its columns. 
4 



74: CROSSING OF FLIES IX THE AIR. 

Yet perhaps 'tis the most manly of all the great city dailies. 
How many times was the World blatent with threats at the 
Tammany Ring, and then sopped into silence. Whitelaw 
Reid has lately elected himself editor and publisher of the 
Tribune, with half a million dollars behind him. Who owns 
the dog now that nosed Greeley into the grave ? When the 
Tribune truckles to Jay G-ould, calls for the hanging of 
iStokes, and plays into the hands of David Dudley Field, a 
little black-mailing would dignify its character Faugh ! the 
American press has been the mere skunk of the Church, 
bribed by its subscription-list to save Beecher in a universal 
stench of black-mail. Bat the Woodhull's doctrine of Free- 
Love, the one thing " beastly and abominable " that now in- 
habits the earth! 

W^ell, I praise the Lord that I have never had any personal 
use for this doctrine. The " effete system of marriage," as 
Woodhull and Claflin sometimes call it, has always been good, 
enough for me in spirit and in letter. And there can be no 
possibility that the love of average human beings will ever fall 
into chaotic license — the common misunderstanding of "free- 
love — and which the poet Wordsworth once described to 
Emerson as "the crossing of flies in the air." But for even 
the earnest opponents of a theory, it is well to know what the 
theory is. 

Such, however is not the current method of opposing 
" social freedom." The rule in this case is to shut both eyes, 
strike out w r ith all your might, and hit — nothing. That 
is, the fops and dolls — the nincompoops in general — who make 
up what is called " society," are without the mental capacity to 
understand what free-love means. The whole world is a big 
brothel — that is their conception. And they can't be cured of 
it. The true idea w r ould burst open their little heads. With 
them too " free love " is now the last rotten egg they can find 
to throw at people who do know something. Though enlisted 
for the war against free-love in the sense of unchained lust, 
and though distrusting and opposing any departure from 
monogamy in marriage, I have no desire to stand in an infant- 
class of idiots, who answer our argument, first by misconceiv- 
ing it, and then by turning up the end of a pug nose. ' 

Besides, there is much in the movement called " social free- 
dom "that should be admitted at once, as simple justice, in 
the practical application of rights and morals. 

In a recent article, for instance, by Tennie C. Claflin (to take 
an authority sufficiently obnoxious) she claims this : — 



SOCIAL FREEDOM. 75 

" If the loss of purity is disgrace to unmarried women, then the same should 
be held of men ; if the mother of a child out of legal wedlock is ostracized, 
then the father should share the same fate. If a life of female prostitution is 
wrong, a life of male prostitution is equally wrong. If Contagious Diseases 
Acts are passed, they should operate equally on both sexes." 

The Young Men's Christian Association, of New York, have 
endeavored to present the equal chastity of the sexes by sup- 
pressing Miss Claflin's article as " obscene." But there is more 
of the Christian religion in it, and more good sense, than in 
Dodge and Comstock's entire band of theological Hessians. 

But directly in regard to the. doctrine of " free love" again, 
it is necessary for our intelligent opponents to acknowledge that 
'tis not merely a WoodhuU that believes in " new social rela- 
tions" for men and women, but 'tis many of the most capa- 
cious minds and hearts on earth, from John Stuart Mill to 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. WoodhuU is only a tremendous 
horn, and Col. Blood is now blowing in front of Jericho. 

When Mrs. Stanton stood up in New York, after the trial of 
McKarland for killing Richardson, and said that no brute 
should be the dreaded owner of a woman's soul and body, she 
stated the principle of social freedom, as understood by its own 
expounders. Mrs. Stanton felt no statute in a book was so 
sacred as that which crushed woman's right to her own 
individuality. 

" Social freedom," then, from one view, is merely the ex- 
treme logical end of democracy — absolute individual sovereign- 
ty — simple self ownership. No bond, no custom, no law can 
righteously deny it. Yet this truth, after all, is only half a 
truth, and the other half is the duty which every individual 
— every self sovereign — owes to his neighbor — that is, to so- 
ciety. 

" Love," says the WoodhuU, should be " free " precisely like 
"worship." The world has outgrown laws to govern religion 
and leaves conscience unfettered. The fetters of constraint 
should be broken from marriage, and the parties allowed to 
mind their own business. 

Such is the argument. But the world has not outgrown all 
laws concerning worship. It prevents one congregation from 
disturbing another, or taking possession of their church. And 
in regard to marriage has society no "undeniable rights?" 
Marriage is not a relation of two individuals solely, but of 
their children as well. And has my neighbor no right to pro- 
tect himself against the enforced support of my children ? 



76 THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY. 

Undoubtedly there is no mysterious sacredness in the relation 
of sex; it is a human affair, amenable to human justice. 

'Twould now be useless to treat it otherwise ; for general 
liberty has become so broad that strong persons, justified to 
themselves, take their lives in their own hands, defying society 
if necessary, and conquering it by ability and success, as Mr. 
and Mrs. Lewes have done even in the midst of English con- 
servatism. The sentiment of love is perhaps the most impor- 
tant in the happiness of life. Nor is it even perfect without 
the expectation of permanence. So 'tis easy enough to see that 
two human beings will not generally give themselves up to 
each other in the closest of intimacy and responsibility, with- 
out as much formality, at least, as they would take in "passing 
receipts " over the transfer of a horse or a pig. Still the 
tendency in America is doubtless to multiply the facilities of 
divorce; and the laws will probably end in according to all the 
" sovereignty" that two parties to a "civil contract" mutually 
desire, and that the interests of offspring will permit. 

In the Beecher-Tilton scandal, however, "the Woodhull" 
sets up an illustration of " social freedom " that must delight 
the soul of Stephen Pearl Andruss, but would empty the 
very meaning of virtue out of the world. Claiming all she 
does of Beecher, she claims with it, that no wrong teas done 
except in the deceit of the doing and the hypocrisy of hiding the 
deed. A man who feeds Plymouth Church with his soul, needs 
the magnetic sustenance of "many women." It is all lovely 
to Woodhull — all serene and beautiful. The only fault would 
be in a Tilton's monopolizing some poor woman, so that she 
should not be comforted by her pastor, and so that he should 
be deprived of elixir for new prayers and sermons. 

Here is the Oneida community let loose — free love for the 
saints without even the advantages of material communism. 
Fourier himself puts Ninon de L'Enclos, Beecher, and the 
Woodhulls in a separate " phalanx " of their own kind, though 
he insists that some such people will always exist as exceptions 
lo the race. They have got out of their " phalanx," it seems, 
and have gone to "reforming things." 

But, as Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis says, "the Woodhull" 
is not to be befooled. The woman's bitter experience has taught 
her all the sickness of the times. " Free love" and " stirpi- 
culture " are rather striking remedies for it. But in an age of 
Tweed, and Oakes Ames, Challis, Comstock, and God in the 



THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY. 77 

constitution; Oakey Hall, model artists and Eosenweig; in- 
dustrious fleas and D. W. Huston; Bowen, Beecher, the 
Tombs, and the Police Gazette — in such an age the world canH 
change for the worse. Free love may be its last hope. At any 
rate, if a young woman of thirty-four years and another of 
thirty, with one Missouri Colonel behind them, can irighten 
the whole American people out of free speech, a free press, 
and an honest court house, " stirpiculture " is needed at once 
for the begetting of some tolerable race of men. 



CHAPTER III. 



clark's errors, by the woodhull — the poem " sir 
marmaduke's- musings," which, it is alleged, is in- 
tended TO REFER TO THEODORE — HOW IT WAS WRITTEN 
IN BOSTON WHEN TILTON HAD DISCOVERED HIS WIFE'S 
FALL, WITH A PISTOL BEFORE HIM, AND PREPARATORY TO 
COMMITTING SUICIDE — MRS. PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS' 
LETTER — "THE MORE I THINK OF THIS MASS OF BEECHER 
CORRUPTION, THE MORE I DESIRE ITS OPENING." 

' \ \THILE the author has never been an admirer of Mrs. 

* " Woodhull, and is one of the few journalists of the 
metropolis who has never, at this writing, laid eyes upon her, 
fairness to her and justice to the reader demands that she 
should be permitted to be heard here, in defence of the charges 
made in the Thunderbolt. Shortly after the appearance of the 
Thunderbolt, Mrs. Woodhull published in the Weekly the fol- 
lowing : — 

" ' The Thunderbolt.' — A paper bearing the above name," 
says Mrs. Woodhull, " has been issued from the press, simul- 
taneously in New York, Albany and Troy, which purports to 
have been written principally by Edward H. G. Clark, of the 
latter city, and published by some unknown parties, who, how- 
ever, are understood to be men of the first rank in social and 
political circles. Notice of this paper has been given in the 
Weekly, whose readers are undoubtedly expecting it, therefore 
I do not need to apologize for copying it entire. 

78 




THEODORE TILTON. 



REVIEW OF THE THUNDERBOLT. 79 

" It will be remembered that Mr. Clark has written several 
criticisms upon the various phases of the Beecher-Tilton scan- 
dal, which have been copied into the Weekly, not excluding his 
severe allusions to myself, without comment. But I shall re- 
main silent no longer and permit this conspiracy to proceed, 
apparently to whitewash somebody, but really to blackwash 
me, to pass as current stuff without showing its true character 
and bringing it home to its real source. I shall, therefore, 
analyze this thunderbolt as severely as my crucible will admit 
of, notwithstanding he has been led to convey the impression 
that I am too ignorant to attempt any such thing, and at- 
tempting, could only expect to write myself down an ass ; 
however, the public shall have the opportunity to judge 
between us as to which of us is the greater. But I shall 
borrow no adjectives with which to do this, as he has felt 
it necessary to * do to accomplish the purposes of the Thunder- 
dolt. 

" The paper is called the Thunderbolt. After a careful and 
candid reading, however, I do not think the name it bears is 
justified by its contents, unless, indeed, a thunderbolt may be 
a general concentration of many lesser bolts which have 
already been expended, and are gathered together to be hurled 
anew and en masse at a given point, for a certain purpose. 
This paper contains no new facts; indeed no new arguments 
regarding existing facts. The several features of the Scandal 
are concentrated, and — as everyone who reads it can well 
surmise — with a well-defined purpose in view, which I 
denominate the double one of whitewashing and black- 
washing. 

" This will become evident when other things which do not 
appear upon the face of the paper itself, are shown. It will he 
remembered that I recently published a letter from Mr. Clark 
to George Francis Train, in which he said he had stolen Theo- 
dore Tilton's l true story.' How the stealing of such a docu- 
ment was done, if what I surmise be true, is not hard to con- 
jecture. Some three months ago a strange paper made its 



80 TILTON'S KNO WLEDGE OF IT. 

appearance entitled the Rainbow. The moment I saw it I said 
that is the Golden Age print, its types, rules, head-lines and 
all ; and so it turned out to be. The moment I saw the 
Thunderbolt I said that is the Golden Age print, its types, rules, 
head-lines and all ; and I believe it will so turn out to be. It 
bears the marks of Theodore Tilton too conspicuously to per- 
mit one to whom he has so often, as he has to me, pointed out 
the characteristic points of the Golden Age to doubt this. I, 
therefore, have no hesitation in expressing my belief, and rest- 
ing upon it, that this paper was not only written by the know- 
ledge and consent of Mr. Tilton, but that it was published by 
him, or at least composed and electrotyped by him. If any doubt 
this let him or her compare the Thunderbolt with the Rainbow, 
and both with the Golden Age. 

" This at first blush may seem improbable, since the Tliun- 
derbolt is severe upon Mr. Tilton. Evidently, however, he 
realizes the futility of escape; indeed, that he deserves it 
all and more, and therefore makes a virtue of necessity and 
aids in the publication, perhaps even connived to bring it 
about. 

" But what, upon its face, are the purposes of the Thunder- 
bolt ? Ostensibly they are to show the danger by which the 
Republic is threatened by the overt acts of the Federal authori- 
ties, acting under the inspiration of the Y. M. C. A. in prose- 
cuting Woodhull, Claflin and Blood for obscenity, to protect 
the reputation of Mr. Beecher, and to relieve Mrs. Tilton from 
the position into which she was thrown by the publication of 
the Beecher-Tilton Scandal ; but this will scarcely be held to 
be its real objects by the careful, analytic reader. The reasons 
to such will appear to be — 

1. "To whitewash Mr. Tilton for the part of informer 
which he has played in exposing Mrs. Tilton's love for and lia- 
ison with Mr. Beecher, which it performs in a rather dubious 
manner. 

2. " To blackwash me for having given publicity to the 
Beecher-Tilton Scandal, which had previously only been talked 



CLARK REGARDS HER FA VORABL T. 81 

about behind the doors, which it does not do with colors that 
will wash. 

3. " To fix irremediably upon Mr. Beecher the fact of his 
private devotion to the principles of social freedom, and to 
brand him to the world as one of the most consummate and 
hypocritical villains living, which, I fear, is done only too 
mercilessly. 

" These, I say, are undoubtedly the motives that led to the 
publication of the Thunderbolt. But all of them could not 
have existed in the mind of Mr. Clark ; nor were they all ap- 
parent in any of his previous articles written by him and 
copied into the Weekly. But Mr. Clark himself informed me 
that he was in receipt of letters in which I was severely de- 
nounced, and I am informed by another, that Mr. Clark has 
been ' advised to treat Mrs. Woodhull in the most contempt- 
uous manner.' Here, then, we find the source of the animus 
which pervades the Thunderbolt, and it is the same as that 
from which I believe the paper really issues. 

" Mr. Clark, I have good reasons for believing, had no incon- 
siderable regard for me personally ; but that has been more 
than overbalanced by the influence that has been brought to 
bear upon him since he began to write about this matter 
When he informed me that he was receiving very bitter letters 
regarding me, I at once, and frankly replied, asking their 
source, and saying : ' Give these letters to me to publish in the 
Weekly for the benefit of the public' I denounced as dishonest 
and cowardly those who would stab me behind my back, when 
they have the opportunity to meet me squarely and openly ; 
and to those terms I now add vicious and malicious, and 
hurl them all in the faces of any one who has busied him or 
herself in writing letters about me all over the country, en- 
deavoring to vitiate the truth of my statement of November 2& t 
by falsehood and malice, but failing to submit them for pub- 
lication in the Weekly. 

" Therefore, when I find emanating from the pen of a gentle- 
man, who previously held me in esteem, the contemptuous 
4* 



82 THE THUNDERBOLT CONTRADICTORY. 

words and the still more contemptible insinuations with which 
I am described in the Thunderbolt, I am forced to the conclu- 
sion that the real motives for them lie outside of the person 
over whose name they stand. 

" Another conclusive reason that Mr. Clark is not the real 
source of the Thunderbolt, the responsibility of which he, how- 
ever, assumes, is that of his own knowledge he would not have 
laid himself open to the terrible repulse he must now sustain. 
The Thunderbolt is vulnerable at every point. 

" Moreover, had the statements been entirely the work of 
Mr. Clark, I have a sufficiently good opinion of his ability to 
believe it would not have been so faulty in its construction as 
to make it certain that, when only one of its chief corner-stones 
is removed, as it will be, the whole thing will tumble in an 
insignificant mass of ruins. Besides, it is contradictory and 
unreasonable in its positions, and resorts to falsehoods and un- 
warrantable insinuations to sustain them. I have said to the 
readers of the Weekly that Mr. Clark is a gentleman. I fear 
they may not be able to agree with me when they shall come 
to realize the true character of the Thunderbolt, which is sup- 
posed to represent the character of its writer, but which I 
hope only represents the terrible pressure to which he has been 
subjected by those whom he at least has honored in the past. 
I freely confess that the course taken by Mr. Clark in his pre- 
vious articles, excepting only a few of what I thought unneces- 
sary epithets used about me, won for him a high place in my 
esteem; but also I freely confess that the Thunderbolt has 
staggered me. I expected great and good things of it. I did 
not think it would stoop to pander either to prejudice, position 
or passion; but that it would be just what ought to be ex- 
pected from a gentleman who is every inch a man. But if the 
Thunderbolt is found, when subjected to the crucible of stern 
analysis, to be based upon other than purely and highly moral 
motives, and to be elaborated for other purposes than the vin- 
dication of truth and the establishment of justice, and tha^ 
these are promoted by falsifications and the use of unjustifi- 



ITS DEFECTS TOO APPARENT. 83 

able methods, what must the conclusion be, except that the 
Thunderbolt does not sustain the reputation of Mr. Clark. If 
it do not, neither he nor his friends ought to censure me for 
showing it, since neither he nor they can possibly be more dis- 
appointed than I shall be. 

"And at the very outset, before proceeding to the argu- 
ment, I am compelled to call attention to a fact which I fear 
will cast doubt even over other portions of the Thunderbolt 
which ought to stand unchallenged. It is of little conse- 
quence to me how it may please critics to treat me personally, 
if their efforts carry forward the glorious cause to which I am 
devoted ; hence, personally, I might consistently permit the 
Thunderbolt to stand unscathed ; but its defects are too ap- 
parent to justify me in passing what I refer to without com- 
ment, or, when comment is begun, from pressing it persist- 
ently to the end. Moreover the glory of the cause of freedom 
and justice will not allow me to stand publicly convicted by 
silence, of endeavoring to promote it by fraud. Therefore, 
observe the following quotation from the Thunderbolt, and if, 
as I said, it vitiate the whole affair let those who resorted to a 
subterfuge so vulgar, bear the odium and not me: 

"'SUSPICIOUS POETRY BY T. T.' " — [MEANING THEODORE 

TILTO^.] 

Published in the " Golden Age," November 12, 1872, (just after the 
Woodhull account of the Beecher-Tilton Scandal.) 

" I clasped a woman's breast 
As if her heart I knew, 
Or fancied would be true, 
Who proved — alas ! she too — 

False like the rest." 

" Now why was this quotation made in the TJiunderbolt — 
special care beiug taken to state the date, and to italicize the 
parenthetical explanation ? Evidently to convey the idea that 
my publication of the scandal had proved me, ' too — false like 



84 SIM MARMADTJKE'8 MUSINGS. 

the rest.' I ask again, can there be any other construction 
put upon this remarkable quotation ? and I answer no other 
can be imagined. 

" But what are the facts about this poem which I now copy 
entire from the Woodhull & Claflin Weekly of date December 
23, 1871, where it was copied from the Golden Age of Novem- 
ber 12, 1871: 

SIR MARMADUKE'S MUSINGS. 

BY THEODORE TILTON. 

" I won a noble fame 
But with a sudden frown, 
The people snatched my crown, 
And in the mire trod down 

My lofty name. 

" I bore a bounteous purse, 
And beggars by the way 
Then blessed me day by day ; 
But I, grown poor as they, 

Have now their curse. 

" I gained what men call friends ; 
But now their love is hate, 
And I have learned too late, 
How mated minds unmate 

And friendship ends. 

" I clasped a woman's oreast, 
As if her heart I knew 
Or fancied would be true, 
Who proved — alas she too ! — 

False, like the rest. 

I now am all bereft — 
As when some tower doth fall, 
With battlement, and wall, 
And gate and bridge and all — 

And nothing left. 



SIB MABMADUKE'S MUSINGS. 85 

• " But I account it worth 
All pangs of fair hopes crossed, 
All loves and honors lost, 
To gain the heavens at cost 
Of losing earth. 

" So, lest I be inclined 
To render ill for ill, 
Henceforth in me instill, 
Oh God, a sweet, good will 

To all mankind." 

Sleepy Hollow, November 1, 18*71. 

" Mr. Clark is one of the editors of the Tliunderlolt, and 
although the poem stood in it, below the article to which his 
name gives personal responsibility, he is not relieved from the 
general editorial responsibility. And I can, therefore, do 
no less than hold Mr. Clark responsible for this fraud, since 
a fraud of the most malicious and vicious kind I must show 
it to be. 

"It will be seen that the poem, instead of having been pub- 
lished in the Golden Age, November 12, 1872, was really pub- 
lished a year before, in 1871 ; therefore the explanation (just 
after the Woodhull account of the Beecher-Tilton Scandal) 
bears the stamp of a vicious and malicious lie, invented to cast 
a reflection upon me, and to question the character of the 
intimacy between Mr. Tilton and me. If Mr. Clark is respon- 
sible for this, or even if he has permitted this to be done by 
others — he being the only one known in the Thunderbolt — I 
say he must have been insane to thus tamper with figures and 
dates and records, and expect it to pass the scrutiny of the 
world. It might, perhaps, be expected to pass the ' Dam- 
phools ' of whom Mr. Train treats, but even Mr. Clark's ' ig- 
noramus/ of 44 Broad street, ought net to be counted among 
so dull a crew as that. As if, however, to court the respon- 
sibility of the intentions of this falsehood, Mr. Clark appar. 
ently proceeds upon its theory, dragging them conspicuously 



86 A REVOLVER LTiyO BESIDE IIIM. 

into another portion of the Thunderbolt, for which he cannot 
escape responsibility. Therefore I see no escape for him from 
either, and fear he has unwittingly been betrayed into some- 
thing that a calmer survey of the field, and less reliance upon 
the honor of those who write bitter letters about me would 
have saved him. 

v "Since, however, the inspiration of this poem has been 
called up and falsely stated, I may, with consistency, give the 
truth regarding it. 

" This poem was written by Mr. Tilton, so he informed me, 
in Young's Hotel, Boston, where he had gone to lecture in 
Tremont Temple, on ' Home, Sweet Home,' with a revolver 
lying beside him, with ivhich he intended to end his misery, 
leaving the poem behind as an explanation of his suicide. 
Returning, however, to his better sense, he desisted and re- 
turned home, called at my residence, 15 East Thirty-Eighth 
street, read me the poem in manuscript, and gave me this his- 
tory of it. It was immediately published in the Golden Age, 
whereupon Mr. Tilton's friends complained bitterly that 
he had told the whole story of his wife's infidelity by that 
poem, which ought never to have been written, much less 
published. 

" I therefore hurl the lie and the insinuation in the face of 
the manufacturer, whoever he may be, and there they shall 
stick as an everlasting mark of infamy. I do not do this be- 
cause I would shrink from the insinuation. I have the honor 
of informing Mr. Tilton, Mr. Clark and the world, that I shall 
ever be only too happy and proud to acknowledge all the ser- 
vice rendered me by Mr. Tilton ; and, moreover, that I never 
receive or accept service of whatever kind, or contract alliances 
of any sort, of which I am ashamed to accept the responsibility. 
And I wish it to be distinctly understood if pretensions have 
been put forward which any one thinks an honor to himself 
but a disgrace to me, I shall not hesitate to correct the error 
into which men usually fall ; or if it requires it, to show that 
whatever is to their credit is also to the credit of women. I 



DAVIS 1 LETTER DOCTORED. S7 

believe that the world shall come not only to know, but also to 
recognize that any associations between men and women can- 
not at the same time be honorable to the former and disgrace- 
ful to the latter ; and I have permitted many a lie to go un- 
heeded to teach the world just this fact. It is simply nobody's 
business what my social relations are, or what they have been, 
nnless I am found advocating publicly oue thing while living 
privately quite a different one. 

" But since, as I believe, through the conspiracy of Mr. Tilton, 
this insinuation has been publicly made in reference to himself ' 
I think I have the right to call upon him to publish a certain 
letter of mine to him, written on four pages of wrapping paper 
which contains a statement that ivill either prove or disprove 
what he has thus wantonly thrust before the public. Further 
on I shall have reason to refer more fully to this matter and of 
what he has denominated the breach between us, but for which 
ho has assigned a lie as the cause. 

(i I have thus shoivn the character of one portion of the 
i Thunderbolt* which has special reference to me, in order that 
all other portions may be critically considered by the reader." 

Mrs. Woodhull after quoting the denial of Mrs. Davis having 
informed her of the scandal remarks: — " A letter differing 
somewhat from this, but evidently having the same source, 
went the rounds of the press in December. At that time I 
pronounced it, so far as it denies the truth of my statement, 
as false, and I now re-affirm that I have good reasons for sta- 
ting that this letter has been ' doctored ' by Mrs. Davis' friends 
since it was received. Mrs. Davis is an honorable, straight- 
forward woman, and will not consent to lie. Had I used her 
name in this connection against her expressed wish, which I 
have not, I am sure she would not deny it. Mrs. Davis knew 
that I intended to nse the ' Beccher corruption ' to bring on 
the social revolution, and instead of endeavoring to dissuade, 
always encouraged me to do so. I therefore again repeat that 
I believe this letter is a forgery, and I know that at least 
one of the persons behind Mr. Clark believes it to be so. I 



88 RAISED UP OF GOD. 

shall never believe that Mrs. Davis will consent to have this 
stand as her letter until I either see her own handwriting to 
that effect or she tells me herself that it is so. I therefore 
call upon Mrs. Davis to state to me in writing, which I prom- 
ise in advance to publish in the Weekly, the truth or falsity of 
this whole matter. 

"I know that this letter has been in the hands of Mr. 
Tilton, as well as others from other persons whom I named as 
my authority : and I also know that had they contained the 
much-needed contradiction they would have been published 
authoritatively by him long since. Nevertheless, he took care 
to have it come to my ears that he had letters completely refu- 
ting my statements; but the perusal of the letters to and by 
others revealed this thin pretense. They perhaps question the 
language used, but not the thing stated. Now let this be dis- 
proved if it can be, by the publication of the original letters 
from Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Stanton ; all others, as I belies, 
are forgeries. 

" According to the Woodhull, she received a letter from Mrs. 
Davis, in May, 1871, in which Mrs. D. says: 

" ' I believe you are raised up of God to do a wonderful work, 
and I believe you will unmask the hypocrisy of a class that 
none others dare touch. God help you and save you. The 
more I think of that mass of Beecher corruption the more I 
desire its opening.' 

"In Mrs. Davis' second note from Paris, she refers to her 
letter from which Mrs. Woodhull claimed to have taken this 
extract, and says: 

"'The reference in my letter I do not remember; but, if 
there, it was in allusion to statements made by them to me. 
But I think it was not there.' 

"Now, says Mrs. Woodhull, if Mrs. Davis wrote the above, 
which I do not believe she did, the following may refresh her 
memory: 

Home, Wednesday. 

"'Dear Victoria: — I have prepared the manuscript and 
returned it to Mr. Wood. There is a sentence missing at the 
end of Mrs. Stanton's address, which I have written in pencil. 



MRS. DA VIS' LETTER 89 

I think if the appendix was begun in the middle of the page 
it would look better. I wish that a dozen could be sent at 
once to Mrs. Emily Pitt Stevens, Pioneer, San Francisco, Cali- 
fornia. Pray ask Mr. Andrews, Col. Blood — any one who has 
time, to see that it comes ont right this time. If he would 
send me a copy before the edition is struck off it would be a 
good thing. 

'"It seems to me, on the whole, that it will not be best to 
send the platform ont in this edition — that is to bind it up 
with it. The appendix closes properly with the winter's work. 
The platform belongs to another season. 

"•How I wish, dear, you could be here a little while, it is so 
quiet and peaceful. I wonder I ever want to go anywhere — 
into the turmoil and strife of life. 

"'I thought of you half of last night, dreamed of you and 
prayed for you. 

"•I believe you are raised up of God to do a wonderful work, 
and I believe you will unmask the hypocrisy of a class that 
none others dare touch. God help you and save you. The 
more I think of that mass of Beecher corruption the more I 
desire its opening. 

"'I wish you would send me the names of the two kept 
women on the platform of Boston. I will not use them till 
you give me leave, but it will help me to act as I must. 

"'I suppose you have seen the scrap I enclose* at all events, 
it's best you should be armed at all points. 

"'If Mr. Andrews will give an hour or two to that book it 
will give me rest. Kind regards to him and Tennie. 

"'Ever yours lovingly, 

"'Providence, May 29, 1871. "'P. W. Davis.'" 

"Immediately after the Washington Convention in January, 
1871, Mrs. Davis begun the preparation of 'The Twenty 
Years' History of the Woman Suffrage Movement,' which was 
published under the supervision of Woodhull & Claflin by 
their printer. This letter refers to that work and was written 
in May, after the Convention in Apollo Hall, and if I remem- 
ber rightly, was the first one received from her on her return 
home after that convention. 

" Who can read this letter, the original of which in her own 
handwriting and bearing her own signature, I happen still to 



90 MASS OF BEECHER CORRUPTION. 

have, and believe that Paulina Wright Davis ever wrote the 
first letter in the Thunderbolt, pretending to be from her. I 
will not attempt here to show the inconsistencies of the sev- 
eral statements contained in the letter dated Paris,, November 
20, 1872, which that of May, 1871, does not refute, since I 
have no excuse to review Mrs. Davis until I am satisfied that 
she has denied something. But I may consistently show the 
disparity between such points of the two letters as their own 
.language involves. 'I did believe that V. C. Woodhull was 
going to do a great work for woman; I am grieved that she 
has failed in what she gave promise of doing.' Now, what 
was this work? Her letter to me fully explains. 'I believe 
you are raised up of God to do a wonderful work; and I believe 
that you will unmask the hypocrisy of a class that none other 
dare touch. God help and save you. The more I think of 
tli at mass of Beecher corruption the more I desire its opening/ 
It seems clear that she conceived the great work that I was to 
do was the very thing I have done and the very thing that 
Mrs. Davis desired should be done. Where, then, have I failed 
to do what she believed I was raised up of God to do? And 
can Mrs. Davis be grieved because I have opened just what she 
desired should be opened, which ' none other dare touch?' 

"And she was thinking more and more of * that mass of 
Beecher corruption/ Now, what did that mass consist of? A 
mass means more than one thing of one kind, and Mrs. Davis 
is a careful writer, never writing one thing and meaning 
another. When she said ' that mass of Beecher corruption ' 
she meant just what I have stated that she said to me she 
learned from Mrs. Tilton, not only about herself, but all that 
has more recently come to the light of day, by the publication 
of Tilton's letter to Bowen regarding a member of his own 
family, which is the foundation for the statement by Mrs- 
Tilton, that she had recently learned that Mr. Beecher had 
had ******* under most extraordinary circumstances with 
another person. What those extraordinary circumstances were, 
may bo learned by referring to Tilton's letter to Bowen. * * * 



BO WEN IN THE MUDDLE. 91 

"I repeat that the first knowledge I had of the Beecher. 
Tilton matter was imparted to me by Mrs. Davis at my office, 
44 Broad street, where she called on her way over from Mrs. 
Til ton's, and related to me what she had just heard from her. 
But she told me nothing of Mr. Bowen. Whatever I know of 
him I learned much later, from Mr. Tilton himself. Neither 
did Mrs. Stanton say anything to me about the Bowen affair, 
and when I published my first intimation in the World and 
Times that ' I knew a clergyman of eminence in Brooklyn who 
lives in concubinage with the wife of another clergyman of 
almost equal eminence/ I meant Mr. Beecher and Mr. Tilton. 
Had I known at that time that Bowen was mixed up in the 
muddle I should have used it, because he had just made a furi- 
ous and unwarrantable assault upon me in a leading editorial 
in the Independent. Mrs. Davis, I am certain, did not origin- 
ate this scandal, but that I first heard some of the particulars 
from her I have ample proof, which will be advanced should a 
denial from her ever make it necessary. But I wish paren- 
thetically again to state my position regarding Mrs. Tilton. 
I conceive that Mrs. Tilton's love for Mr. Beecher was her true 
marriage, and that her marriage to Mr. Tilton, while loving 
Mr. Beecher, is prostitution. If I have any cause to criticise 
her, it is for consenting to remain the legal wife of Mr. Tilton, 
As I said in the original article, Mrs. Tilton is really far 
advanced in the principles of social freedom, as I learned from 
Mr. Tilton himself. 

" In view of all this, can anybody believe what Mr. Clark 
infers from the pretended letters to Mrs. Davis that 'Mrs. 
"Woodhull is flatly denied.' If there is a denial, it is Davis 
against Davis. Besides this, I have a recent letter from Provi- 
dence, from one who knows some, of Mrs. Davis' friends, which 
says: 'There are not a few of her friends who do not credit 
the authority of the letter.' 

"As far, then as Woodhull has given Mrs. Paulina Wright 
Davis for authority in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal, she is fairly 
and flatly denied. The position, however, of Mrs. Elizabeth 



92 MBS. BLOOMERS TESTIMONY. 

Cady Stanton is quite different. At Lewiston, Maine, she 
undoubtedly 'denounced' Mrs. Woodhull's story, as the news- 
papers declared at the time; and Theodore Tilton holds a let- 
ter from her, in which she declines to stand in the precise 
attitude portrayed by Mrs. "Woodhull. Yet an excellent lady, 
whose letter I have traced to its source, declared in the Hartford 
Times soon after Mrs. Stanton was interviewed in Maine, that 
she 'had charged Mr. Beecher, to parties residing in Philadel- 
phia, and known to the correspondent, with very much the 
same offense of which Mrs. Woodhull speaks.' This testimony 
is confirmed by Edward M. Davis, Esq., the disciple and son-in- 
law of the venerable Lucretia Mott, and by Mrs. Amelia 
Bloomer, who asserts that Mrs. Stanton whispered the scandal 
to her 'a year and a half ago,' and said 'the Woodhull knew all 
about it' At Rochester, not long since, Mrs. Stanton publicly 
refused to deny anything; and, last of all, she has recently sent 
to me, through a mutual friend, this word: 'Assure Mr. Clark 
that I care more for justice than for Mr. Beecher.' Mrs. Stan- 
ton, in short, has been somewhat perverted by Woodhull, and 
denies the perversion. 

" Why, asks Mrs. W., has the part played by Mrs. Stanton 
been so niggardly treated by Mr. Clark? It seems to me that 
she is of sufficient importance to have received much greater 
consideration. Or does Mr. Clark know that too many peo- 
ple have learned the same facts from her that I learned? 
People in California and Chicago, as well as in Philadelphia 
and Iowa, testify to the same things. Mr. Clark says I have 
lied. In what, Mr. Clark? pray inform me. And if I have 
lied, do you mean to also say that Mrs. Stanton has lied? But 
why does Mr. Clark say, 'At Lewiston, Maine, she undoubtedly 
denounced Mrs. Woodhull's story,' when he knows that she has 
denied that telegraphic statement of 'two clergymen.' "The 
following was published in the Weekly of Feb. loth. The fol- 
lowing we clip from the Springfield Republican's Boston 
letter: 

"'Mrs. Stanton, by the way, has disclosed a curious fact 
about the dispatch from Lewiston, Maine, sent all over the 
country, some months since, to contradict Mrs. Woodhull's 
Beecher slander on Mrs. Stanton's authority. She never author- 



THE " JUSTITIA " LETTER. 93 

ized such a dispatch, and asserts that the two clergymen at 
Leviston, who called on her to talk about the matter, quite 
misrepresented what she said to them. Without going into 
the general question of fact, it is understood that Mrs. Stanton's 
correction of Mrs. Woodhull's account referred only to some 
expressions of her own there quoted, and she expressly disclaims 
any statement that Mrs. Woodhull's story was 'untrue in every 
particular,' which the Lewiston dispatch made Mrs. Stanton 
say, but which she never has said.' 

" There has been, says Mrs. Woodhull, a great deal said by 
the members of Plymouth Church about a letter from Mrs. 
Stanton in the hands of Mr. Tilton, which they claim is par- 
allel with the Lewiston telegraph despatch. Now that Mrs. 
Stanton has said that ' two clergymen' stated untruth in the 
Lewiston dispatch, will the above-mentioned members please 
publish the letter, so that the public may see if they too have 
not, in their zeal for Mr. Beechcr, gone as far beyond the truth 
as their Lewiston friends? It will also be remembered that in 
the 'Justitia' letter published in the Hartford Times, and 
dated November 25, 1872, the writer, in speaking of the reason 
that this alleged denial could not have been written by her, 
said: * I will tell you, Mr. Editor; simply because Mrs. Stan- 
ton dare not imperil her own reputation for veracity; for she 
has herself charged Mr. Beecher to parties residing in this city 
and known to me, the writer, and elsewhere, with very much 
the same offenses of which Mrs. Woodhull speaks.' 

"In direct connection with the above, we find the following 
in the Patriot, of Chariton, Iowa: 

"'In the Council Bluffs Nonpareil Mrs. Amelia Bloomer 
says: In the general condemnation of Mrs. Woodhull for pub- 
lishing the scandal told to her, the question of its truth or 
falsity is in a great measure lost sight of. A. B. does not 
believe that Mrs. Woodhull manufactured these stories; and 
now that the thing is out, she would like to see "the Beecher- 
Tilton Scandal" tried on its merits. One year and a half ago 
this scandal was whispered in the ears of A. B. by one of the 
parties given as authority, by "the Woodhull," and the one so 
whispering gave Mr. Tilton himself as her authority. She 



94 MRS. TILTON'S LETTER. 

further said that " the Woodhull " knew all about it, and threat- 
ened its publication. This agrees, as far as it goes, with the 
statement of Woodhull, and proves she did not get up the story 
for the purpose of "blackmailing." A. B. has kept this scan- 
dal to herself, and never would have revealed her knowledge if 
it had not come so fully before the public. While deploring, 
for the sake of all parties concerned, for the sake of the church, 
for the sake of decency and good morals, that it has ever come 
to light, she hopes, now it is out, that truth will be elicited and 
justice done — that the chief actors may receive their share of 
punishment, instead of being shielded from censure, while the 
talebearer alone is condemned.' It is useless to add more to 
this. Neither of these refer in the slightest manner to the 
solution of the matter by the Bowen affair; nor are they based 
upon i rumors ■ or ' hallucinations.' It is preposterous simply, 
to attempt to evade the fact that Mr. Tilton is the authority to 
more than me for the details of the Beecher-Tilton, not the 
Beecher-Bowen, Scandal. I have only to ask if Mrs. Stanton 
could have denied the truth of my statement regarding Mrs. 
Tilton, would she not have done it long ago? Everybody must 
unhesitatingly answer yes. But instead of this, her letter to 
Laura Curtis Bullard, which Mr. Tilton has in his possession, 
only qualifies the language used, but not the thing said. I 
believe she claims she did not say that Mr. Tilton called Mr. 
Beecher a damned lecherous scoundrel. 

"I am satisfied to let it remain as Mr. Clark concluded, 'Mrs. 
Stanton in short, has been somewhat perverted by Woodhull, 
but denies the perversion.' 

Keferring to the story of the Tliunderbolt as to the manner 
in which Mrs Tilton was dishonored, Mrs. W. says : — " As a 
correction to this introduction to the 'true story,' I ask Mr. Tilton 
to publish to the world a. certain letter received from Mrs. Tilton, 
during her absence from Brooklyn at a ' watering-place,' in the 
summer of 1871, and refresh his own memory somewhat about 
the facts therein treated of. I remember them very distinctly. 
Perhaps he will accommodate Mr. Clark with the loan of that 
letter. Will Mr. Clark please manage to steal that letter if Mr. 
Tilton will not loan it? I assure you it will give a great deal 
of light as to my truth or falsity; and if Mr. Tilton will not 
loan you the letter, and you cannot manage to steal it, please 



i 



GRIFFITH GAUNT. 95 

ask him if that letter did not state that Mrs. Tilton said she 
had been reading ' Griffith Gaunt? and that night, while on her 
knees till midnight, she had awalcened to the horrible crime she 
had committed against her husband. I am sorry to be obliged 
to jog Mr. Tdtorts memory on these points', but Mr. Clark might 
also ash him if, in that letter, she did not state that she felt that 
she had b^en divorced from him, and that she should never live 
with him again unless they ivere remarried. Again, it may not 
be invidious to inquire, what was the cause of the misunder- 
standing between Mr. and Mrs. Tilton, which could cause Mrs 
Tilton to feel divorced? Surely the refusal to accept Mr. 
Beecher's kind proposals could not have been a cause for divorce ! 
Such faithfulness is generally repaid by other treatment than 
this. Bat let us have the letter. Do not let this rest upon my 
word merely when so good proof exists. If Mr. Tilton pre- 
pares a 'true story and permits it to be 'stolen' let it be a 
'true one/ not a partly true one, but a wholly true one — a half- 
truth always being a lie. 

Commenting upon the TliunderboW s account of how Beecher 
obtained his vindication from Mrs. Tilton, Mrs. Woodhull 



"Here we have as tangled a web as was ever unraveled. 
But does it explain away the original statement upon these 
facts? Read both carefully and then consider the following 
which I purposely omitted stating at the time, as I had no 
desire to introduce Mr. Beecher to the public, in any light 
other than was necessary for my purpose. But the above is 
given to the public, as will be believed, by Mr. Tilton's consent, 
and I am therefore justified in saying that what is here called 
his 'true story' differs in some material points from the story 
he told me, which was this: 

" He said after he had learned of the facts, and while Mrs. 
Tilton was still dangerously ill from the premature birth of a 
child induced by his treatment, that he met Mr. Beecher at 
Frank Moulton's and there confronted him; that they endeav- 
ored to compel Mr. Beecher to terms, and that the interview 
was suddenly terminated by Mr. Beecher begging to be excused 
for a few moments until he could consult a friend. This was 



96 ^ TANGLED WEB. 

granted. He left them, returning in an hour or so, his man- 
ner entirely changed. His suing for mercy was turned into 
defiance. He simply rang the door bell and said; 'Gentlemen. 
I do not see fit to prolong this interview; I have got my vindi- 
cation in my pocket/ and turned upon his heel and inconti- 
nently left. 

"He said both he and Frank were utterly astonished at the 
conduct of Mr. Beecher, but it was fully explained when he 
returned to his home, where Mrs. Tilton, in deep distress, sta- 
ted that Mr. Beecher had been there, and that she had signed 
some paper she scarcely knew what, but she was afraid it was 
something that might do harm. It was then that Mr. Moulton 
went to Mr. Beecher, and in the manner I have already 
described, demanded the document. No such rendition as the 
one given in the 'true story' was ever given to me either by 
Mr. Moulton or Mr. Tilton, and it is entirely inconsistent with 
his conduct toward Mrs. Tilton, and his grief and rage before 
me, and especially his conduct when he took me to ride to the 
grave where was buried, as he said, the fruits of Mr. Beecher's 
intimacy with his wife, at which time sitting on the Battle 
Hill Monument, he went anew over the whole story, including 
the stamping of the wedding ring into the soil of the grave. 
It is also utterly inconsistent with the sentiment of the poem 
in which is 'She, too, false like the rest.' And what was the 
great grief that caused him to walk the streets of Brooklyn the 
whole night inconsolable, as he has done night upon night 
either alone or with Mr. Moulton; and his constantly expressed 
desire 'to die as he had nothing to live for in this world?' 
The purported faithfulness of Mrs. Tilton in saving Mr. 
Beecher from becoming an adulterer ought to have made Mr. 
Tilton extremely happy in her possession. Or was he dis- 
tracted because she did resist the persuasions of Mr. Beecher? 
But I have no desire at this time to call attention to the other 
discrepancies between Mr. Til ton's statements to me and his 
'true story,' except to say that my statement stands, made by 
me as I received it, fact after fact from Mr. Tilton himself, 
most of which were also confirmed by the several witnesses 
whom I have mentioned. Had Mr. Tilton never told the same 
story to others than to me, I might feel called upon to go into 
a detailed proof of the whole matter; but since he has so 
repeated it to a half dozen persons whom I know, I do not 
think it necessary to refute his later and amended statement. 
The public will place it side by side with mine, and give due 



DID NOT MEET ACCIDENT ALL T. 97 

weight to the fact that the amended statement was prepared 
under the bias of an emergency which, perhaps, he did not 
contemplate when he made the former and unbiased statement 
to me and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Col. Mix and others; 
although I ought to say that Mr. Tilton always gave me to 
understand that he should be glad when the matter was out, 
but that he should not want to be the one to first move in it. 

Next Mrs. "W. reviews the manner in which she made Theo- 
dore's acquaintance and says : — 

" Mr. Tilton did not meet me accidentally in company with 
a mutual friend, but he came to my office with Stephen Pearl 
Andrews and was introduced tome, and this was the only time 
I ever saw him previous to that when he called with the World, 
To others he has said that upon that occasion I sent for him 
to come to see me. In his ' true story ' he has neglected to do 
this, and he does so because he knows it is not true. I neither 
sent for him nor thrust the World before him when he did 
come. He came of his own accord with the article in question 
from the World, and asked me : * Whom do you mean by 
that?' But the idea that an exaggerated rumor that had 
been travelling about for a year or two, which he could have 
instantly corrected if false, but which he did not even attempt 
to do, might become very dangerous in my hands, would be 
preposterous 'if it were not ridiculous. I do not think any 
logical mind can read this part of the 'true story' and not 
conclude, if it be true, that there is still another true story 
which he at least has not told, and that the magnified propor- 
tion of the campaign which was planned to capture me is only 
to be believed upon the theory that what I knew, which it 
was necessary should be kept quiet, was not exaggerated 
rumors merely. 

" It must be remembered that this occurred in the spring of 
1871, soon after the May Convention in Apollo Hall. It will 
also be seen by reference to the ' true story/ that this imbrog- 
lio with Mrs. Tilton began 'in the fall of 1870;' that it was 
' six weeks ' thereafter that Mr. Tilton explained the matter 



98 EXAGGERATED RUMORS. 

to Mr. Bowen, after which the other facts occurred. But it 
was ' eight months after the commencement of the Beecher- 
Tilton differences ' that Mr. Beecher visited Mrs. Tilton and 
got the letter from her. Now this would carry the time for- 
ward at least to August 1871, and yet I am found possessed of 
^exaggerated rumors' regarding it in May of the same year, 
before they happened, which 'had already been travelling 
about for a year or two/ Figures are dangerous things with 
which to attempt a lie, because they always mean definite 
things and the same things to all people. In constructing a 
' true story/ Mr. Tilton should have made more careful use of 
such a dangerous agent. Of course he presumes that he can 
place his own word in opposition to mine, and be believed ; 
but he is not egotist enough to imagine he can arrange figures 
to suit himself, and be able to palm them off as correct when 
any one is liable to prove them. The failure to keep his time 
correctly, to my mind, will invalidate his ' true story ' to no 
inconsiderable extent, in the minds even of those who may 
wish to accept and believe his false one. Mr. Clark ought to 
have been clear enough to have detected this discrepancy in 
the * True ' Statement." 

"'On statements furnished by Mrs. Woodhull and Colonel 
Blood, Mr. Tilton finally made the last bold stroke to win the 
undying gratitude of 44 Broad street by giving his name and 
the literary finish of his pen to the " Biography of Victoria C. 
Woodhull." He was mistaken, he now thinks, in that person. 
With the Woodhull "gratitude" is nothing, "principle" every- 
thing; and principle in her case, as in Vanderbilt's, is to " carry 
a point." Mr. Tilton had a terrible warning of this phase, of 
her character, when some of his lady acquaintances and special 
friends deemed it necessary, in the early part of 1872, to dis- 
own Mrs. Woodhull in the arena of Woman's Eights on account 
of her social doctrines. The Woodhull instantly flanked the 
movement by sending the ladies printed slips of their own 
private histories (in an article called " Tit for Tat,") declaring 
that if they should disgrace her for teaching 'social freedom,' 
she would print the article in her Weekly, and they should sink 
with her for practicing the theory.' 



TILTON WRITES EI8 BIOGRAPHY. 99 

" I scarcely know," says Mrs. Woodhull " in what manner 
justly to characterize the misconstruction contained in the 
above paragraph. To properly show all the circumstances in- 
volved would require an entire paper, which is impossible here, 
but as it refers to circumstances that have been variously and 
widely commented on, and in a manner most prejudicial to me, 
I feel that I ought not to pass them without the notice they 
deserve. 

" Mr. Tilton, upon several public occasions, long before my 
publication of the scandal, regretted that he had written my 
biography, in a manner and with explanations that perhaps 
ought at the time to have received notice. The statement 
here, however, is very guarded, compared with some others he 
has made. Just previous to the writing of that biography. 
The Victoria League had been formed, and it was found neces- 
sary to put some authoritative statement before the world re- 
garding my past life in the form of an autobiography. I put 
Col. Blood in possession of the material, and requested him to 
arrange it for me. While he was doing this, Mr. Tilton came 
forward with the proposition that this must be his work, and 
he insisted so strenuously on performing it that I consented, 
and he did it. But he did not take the manuscript prepared 
by Col. Blood as his only authority. All the important or 
seemingly extravagant statements he took special pains to 
verify by other authority, while all the 'finish/ and that which 
upon its face is his own, and which really gives it all its im- 
portance, was the result of his own observation and was his 
own judgment. He may, for aught I know, have written that 
biography for some motive unknown to me ; but it is absurd 
to pretend that it was to keep me from publishing the scandal, 
the basis for the whole of which, as I have already shown ac- 
cording to his figures, did not at that time exist. 

" But what, as early as the Cincinnati Convention, had oc- 
curred to cause him to change his judgement of me ? He had 
found me a ' truthful person/ and one with whom he was 



100 I DETERMINED TO STOP IT. 

proud to be known or connected. Something must have com- 
pelled a change. He has stated on some occasions that it was 
the ' Tit for Tat ' above referred to. What was that article ? 
I will state just what it was, and thus at one and the same 
time correct the erroneous version given above, and show that 
it was not the cause of the breach between Mr. Tilton and me. 
A number of women, all of whom belonged to i one set/ had 
for two years taken every occasion to let their long and loose 
tongues wag in defaming me. I determined to stop it. I 
grouped them together in an article which I had put in type, 
sending a proof of it to each of the persons involved. In the 
next issue of the Weekly I wrote an editorial, in which I faith- 
fully promised them if the blackguarding of me did not cease 
I should publish the article. 

" Not one of these, however, was l some of his lady acquain- 
tances and special friends,' who disowned me '-' in the arena of 
Woman's Eights ' ' on account of my social theories,' since 
none of them had ever taken any part with the wing of suf- 
fragists in which I labored. Nor was it because they disowned 
me as a suffragist that I prepared the article, as Mr. Tilton's 
( true story relates ? And nobody knows this better than Mr. 
Tilton himself. He knows it was because I was constantly 
belied by them as to what Free Love meant to me in practice. 
The editorial to which I refer sufficiently explains this, and it 
was not misunderstood by any of them at whom it was writ- 
ten. I have had no occasion to publish it." 

" ' This generalship maybe defended by the old proverb that 
" anything is fair in love and war ;" but such a blow " under 
the belt " was severely rebuked by Mrs. Stanton, and was 
regarded with reasonable terror by Mr. Tilton. He now be- 
came fully conscious of Mrs. Woodhull's capacit}' of destruc- 
tion, and retired completely from her circle. The impending 
" crack of doom " was not to be hushed up with " gratitude." 
Mr. Tilton had himself confided the substance of his " true 
story" to Mrs. Wood hull, and knew that so much of his fate 
was in her hands. Still, he affirms that he was astonished be- 
yond measure when she at last magnified it into the unearthly 
proportions of the Beecher-Tilton Scandal.' 



REASONABLE TERROR. 101 

"What does Mr. Tilfcon mean," asks Mrs. W, "when he 
says, ' I was severely rebuked by Mrs. Stanton?' I have Mrs. 
Stanton's letter to me regarding it; but when he says it in the 
form of a rebuke he only again wilfully perverts it. I never 
received a kinder note from Mrs. Stanton than that one, and I 
therefore hurl this utter disregard for truth in his teeth as an- 
other evidence that he has ' a constitutional disregard for 
truth which is ever showing itself when an opposite course 
would serve him better. 

"Now, as to the ' terror ' it inspired in Mr. Tilton, and ' the 
terrible warning ' it was to him, and his l retiring completely 
from her circle,' I am perfectly conscious that he was terrified 
by it, since he came with it to me, and said Laura Curtis Bill- 
iard had just left his office, having come there with the article 
which he held in his hand. He said, i Strike out this portion,' 
pointing to a part of it, ' and I will help you kill the rest' But 
he played none of the ' heroics ' with which he has been in the 
habit of relating this interview, which he says occurred in his 
office instead of mine — only another evidence of his constitu- 
tional defect. Theodore Tilton never attempted heroics with 
me but once, and he found they did not have the desired effect 
and he at once and forever abandoned their use ; but he has 
become so accustomed to them when others are involved, that 
when I am not present he forgets himself and assumes them in 
things which involved me. 

" ' He had become fully conscious of Mrs. Woodhull's capacity 
for destruction and retired completely from her circle, and this 
he presents as the cause of the breach between us to which I 
refer in the opening of this case. But before proceeding to 
perform a disagreeable task, I must premise by saying I had 
hoped that selfish personal considerations on the part of Mr. 
Tilton, if no higher motive, would have for ever saved me from 
the necessity of doing this ; but since he seems to court dis- 
tinction, let him have it to his heart's content.' 

"I therefore state, as emphatically as I can, that it was not 
( Tit for Tat ' that caused him to i retire from her circle.' At 
the time he came to me with that article I had not seen him 



102 SHE HAS BEEN HIS TEACHER. 

for six weeks, and I should not have seen him then had it not 
been for ' reasonable terror ' that something regarding a partic- 
ular friend of his which it contained was going to be made 
public' But he did call quite frequently after that, during 
the interval until the Cincinnati Convention. The day before 
he left to attend that Convention he called upon me for the 
last time. 

' He said he was ' going to the Convention to report it for 
the Tribune? 

" I said, " Theodore you are lying again. You are going to 
Cincinnati to nominate Mr. Greeley, and I see, clairvoyantly, a 
coffin following you, in which you will be responsible for put- 
ting him, because it will result in his death.' 

" He sat looking and listening to me, and for a long time 
never said a word ; but finally, with a sad tenderness I shall 
never forget, rose and left me, and I have never spoken with 
him since. Up to that time he had never even hinted that he 
regretted his associations with me ; but, on the contrary, 
always expressed a deep satisfaction regarding it, the 
reasons for which I have no desire to make public, unless 
compelled, when I shall not hesitate to do so to the fullest 
extent. . 

" But to return to the time prior to the f Tit for Tat ' article." 
A goodly time before that I was forced to the conclusion, in 
spite of all his efforts in behalf of reform, that his inspirations 
and mine were entirely dissimilar. I was absolutely absorbed 
in reform projects, and was indifferent to any and all who were 
not the same ; and I could no longer afford to be annoyed in 
the manner in which I was annoyed by him. As he would not 
accept a verbal communication from me as meaning anything, 
I was finally compelled deliberately to write a formal letter, 
which I know was delivered to him, and a copy of which I now 
have before me, instructing him that his visits to me, both at 
my house and office, must be discontinued, plainly stating the 
reasons for so doing. They were not for any want of esteem 
and kind regard, because I had a regard amounting almost to 



STAND BY PRINCIPLE. 103 

affection for him. Besides, I had been his teacher in the prin- 
ciples of the new social dispensation, and I found elements in 
him that I was hopeful might make him the hero of that dis- 
pensation. That hope I never finally abandoned until a few 
days after the appearance of his letter to ' my complaining 
friend.' On Christmas day last I wrote him a final appeal, 
endeavoring to rouse him to a sense of what he was losing, 
and to stimulate him, even in that late moment, to come for- 
ward and be the hero : — 

" < Christmas Day, New York City, 1872. 

" ' Theodore : — The spirit saith unto me, " Write :" " And 
the truth shall make you free," — while anything less than that 
will add to the bondage of the present. 

" ' I told you, a year ago, that within six months ) t ou would 
fall away from me. " By all that's good, never !" you replied. 
Nevertheless the fall came ! 

l * ' I told 3'ou that 3-011 were going to lead vour friend to his 
grave ; you thought it would be to the Presidential chair. He 
lies buried — a victim to the ill-starred movement led off by 
you. 

" 'You became a champion of advanced freedom in your sup- 
port of me ; and your name was on the lips and treasured in 
the heart of every Radical in the world. You repudiated the 
course that had won this love, and neither Radical nor Con- 
servative stands by you. 

" ' And now I say : There is a single course of redemption 
left you ; and for your own sake I pray you heed it. Accept 
the situation. Stand by principle, and be not affrighted by 
public opinion. 

" ' You have the most glorious opportunity ever vouchsafed 
to man. Strike the hypocrite (if you will) the blow 3-011 have 
at 3'our service ; but put your loving, protecting arm about the 
angel whom he deceived. Dare to defend her freedom, and 
stand b3 r her, not to the death, but to the new life. 

" 4 Think not to gain what you desire, by catering to the try- 
pocris3", the poltrooneiy, the cowardice of the present ; but 
strike for the glorious and redeemed souls of the near future, 
and become their hero. Victoria. 

"Since then I am grieved to confess I have believed him 
lost, lost to the cause, lost to himself, and lost to all sense of 



104 W . REGRETS THEODORES POSITION. 

lionor and truth. I believed firmly that he would come for- 
ward as he had so often said he would, when the time should 
arrive, and stand by the cause. He knew that the statement 
of November 2d was to be published, and that I only wanted 
to receive the command of him, whom I serve, to publish it. 
Well do I remember an evenihg when he and I were discussing 
this very subject, that Col. Blood turned from the desk at 
which he was writing, and said: 

" ' Theodore, do you think you will have the courage to stand 
in the gap with us when that time shall come?' 

"lie replied with the most extraordinary asservations in the 
affirmative; and when the whole history of the incipiency of 
this scandal shall come to be known, as it soon will, if justice 
cannot be forced without it, I fear that the once glorious spirit 
of Theodore Tilton will set in the mud. Nobody, not even 
those who are now apparently his best friends, will mourn for 
him more sincerely than I shall; and whatever they may pre- 
tend to him now, not one of them more deeply regrets his 
position than f do, and none would do more to save him than 
I would do, short of the sacrifice of truth, honor and justice. 
And in his soul Theodore Tilton knows this to-day; but he 
also knows that my sense of outraged justice could not be 
swerved to save my own life; and here I again say, there is still 
an avenue of escape for him. He knows what it is, but he will 
not avail himself of it. * Whom the gods would destroy they 
first make mad/ Theodore Tilton rests under their ban. I 
know whereof I speak when I say that his affirmations ' that 
he was astonished beyond measure ' when the scandal appeared, 
were of the same unapproachable acting, in which long prac- 
tice has made him perfect, with which he received the announce- 
ment that the Thunderbolt had appeared; and the inspiration 
in both instances was the same — knowledge and expectation. 
Mr. Tilton did confide all the details of the Beecher-Bowen- 
Proctor Scandal to me, besides a dozen others equally astonish- 
ing and confounding; but those that I obtained from him in 
this way I have not used in my war upon social rottenness, 



ANAL YSIS OF THE TR UE STOR Y. 105 

neither shall I unless compelled; but what I have used I was 
not indebted to his confidence for, since I wrung it from him, 
perhaps not so skillfully as he did the Bowen Scandal from the 
lady involved, nevertheless with sufficient adroitness to become 
fully possessed of it without being under any obligations to 
not disclose it. 

"Mr. Tilton having disclosed to me, 'knew so much of his 
fate was in her hands.' Mr. Tilton could not have considered 
the force of those few words, otherwise he never would have 
used them. If his 'true story' is really a true one, and the 
only true one, what had I to do with fate to him? How could 
I possibly have been able to do him harm by any use which I 
might make of the so-called facts of that story? It is one of 
the most difficult of roles to maintain to endeavor to tell a 
consistent stream of lies about any grave thing. A lie once 
told needs continual lies to sustain it; and people forget lies, 
and neglect to always tell the same one. The truth will some- 
times slip out unwittingly. This instance is a singularly forci- 
ble illustration. My possession of the really true story he 
might consistently have considered as so much of his fate in 
my hands; but with his true story only he should have said so 
much of Mr. Beecher's fate in my hands. I have no doubt 
every person will at once perceive this. And with this I may 
close the analysis of the matter very nearly in the language of 
Mr. Clark with which he closes the presentation of his resume 
of the 'true story:' 

"Such is a careful summary of that 'true story' which 
Theodore Tilton said he should try to keep within his own 
heart. 

"Changed, however, in this wise: 

" [Such is the result of a hasty analysis of the whole story 
which, if Theodore Tilton did not desire made public, he 
should from the outset, have confined within his breast.] 

'"As far as Mr. Beecher is concerned, it will instantly be 

seen that his virtue, at best, is not always the inclination of his 

own will. If Mrs. Woodhull has misrepresented him, and Mr. 
5* 



106 THE DA Y OF JUDGMENT. 

Tilton lias turned her falsehood into truth, still it was only 
through Beecher's failure in carrying out an immoral purpose 
that Mrs. WoodhulPs story is not correct. A correspondent 
of the Cincinnati Commercial — who has evidently been admit- 
ted into some of the secrets of Tilton's foolscap volume, and 
at the same time employed to whitewash Beecher — declares that 
the * true story ' embraces ' a period of ten years,' implicates 
'persons who have not publicly figured in it' and ' elucidates 
some things not likely to be known till the Day of Judgment." 

" ' These stilted phrases have some foundation, though it 
would not be difficult for so plain a man as nrvself to bring that 
" Da} r of Judgment " close to hand, if necessary. I have no 
wish, however, to drag any cringing mortal before the public in 
mere wantonness — especially an} r woman. I regard Henry C. 
Bowen as Beecher's chief " supe" and conspirator, in combining 
with the wretched Jesuit of Protestantism, Anthony J. Com- 
stock, to violate American liberty. From my position, Bowen 
deserves no mercy beyond the bare truth. In regard to other 
persons, I think the public have no special interest in them, 
with one exception.' 

" Now here the cause, says Mrs. "W., which makes the case 
hang fire in Brooklyn, is at last reached. Clark could, if he 
saw fit, bring the day of judgment close to hand, but he has 
no wish to drag a cringing woman before the public. Had it 
been my desire, as the act has been generally interpreted, to 
destroy the usefulness of Beecher and to drive him from 
Plymouth Church, I could have made such use of the material 
in my possession as to have accomplished it. He could not 
have escaped under having me prosecuted on an impossible 
charge of obscenity. He would either have had to throw him- 
self upon the church and confessed or prosecuted me for libel, 
which I know very well he would never attempt to do so long 
as three witnesses now living should live. But such was not 
any part of my motives, and I only used such facts as I had 
good reasons for believing would not be very objectionable to 
any of the parties involved, Beecher alone excepted. And I 
know that, should he be compelled, as he would have been, had 



VIEW OF THE WHOLE CASE. 107 

Tilton acted well his part, to have acknowledged the whole 
matter, that Plymouth Church would be compelled to sustain 
or fall with him. Beecher did not hesitate to say that he knew 
of fifty members of his congregation who would stand by him 
in any event. 

"But the suppression policy cannot succeed. Everything 
will eventually be made public. It has gone too far. All the 
facts are in possession of too many persons, some of whom, I 
think, do wish to kill Beecher, and who will not hesitate to 
drag even a ' cringing woman ' before the public to do it. The 
only method of salvation, as I frankly informed Beecher, was 
to come at once to the front and say: 'Well this is true, and 
now what are you going to do about it?' 

" But I frankly confess that I believe the ultimate fate of the 
now distressed woman, who every hour of her life stands in 
mortal dread of the facts coming before the public, would be 
much better if she were herself to come out and solve this 
whole matter. It will come some time, and the indications 
now are that it is not far off. There should be no more real 
disgrace attached to her about the affair, than there should be 
had she personally been injured in some other manner. No 
honest person could condemn her ior any part she was com- 
pelled to play, and for the judgment of the dishonest none 
should trouble themselves. Therefore, the wise part is to at 
once ventilate this whole affair before its attempted suppression 
drags a half dozen other families into its yawning vortex. 

"'As I view the whole case, in all its bearings, I deem it 
right to say that Tilton claims that he has been violently hated 
by his wife's mother, Mrs. Morris — a lady who is definitely 
represented to me as insane. 

" ' This poor lady is said to have circulated, for many years, 
the most damaging reports against the character of her daugh- 
ter, and against Beecher and Tilton. The earliest scandals 
concerning Mrs. Tilton and the Plymouth pastor are said to 
have proceeded from her. I must add, also, that a long time 
ago there were rumors, among the special acquaintances of the 



108 THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG. 

parties, that Mrs. Tilton was subject to the hallucination that 
some of Beecher's children were those of her own household 
(But Tilton's narrative affords me no hint of this rumor.) 

"I think it was very unwise in Tilton to attempt to drag 
his mother-in-law into the controversy. But what must be 
said of the ' rumors' among the special acquaintances of the 
parties about Mrs. Tilton's ' hallucination?' Those strange 
rumors remind me at once of the finding of Moses in the bul- 
rushes of the Nile, and of the immaculate conception of Jesus; 
and I have no doubt if Tilton's 'true story' stands, that this 
last hallucination will pass into history and be accounted by 
the future as an equally marvelous example of the special 
providences of the God of the Christians. 

"But this hallucination, as I happen very well to know, did 
not extend to Tilton's brain, but in him it rather assumed the 
form of madness, venting itself in violence, especially upon 
the picture of one of the persons involved in the hallucination. 
Whatever milder forms it may now have assumed in him, I 
fear its former violence may cast as serious doubts upon the 
future divinity of this last manifestation as the skeptics of to- 
day throw around that of eighteen centuries ago. 

" What, however, must be the judgment of the future should 
it come to know that this paper, this Thunderbolt, was prepared 
in the rooms of the Golden Age, and when it shall come to be 
known that the letter of ' my complaining friend,' which called 
out the reply contained in the Thunderbolt, was actually writ- 
ten by the dictation of Theodore Tilton, and that at the time 
it was written he was preparing the way to publish in the 
Golden Age the whole of the ' true story.' I do not think I 
overstate it when I say that no such combination of hypocrisy, 
duplicity, falsehood and social irregularities ever existed as the 
future will show the Beechcr-Tilton-Bowen-Proctor Scandal to 
have been: and I am ready to stake my future upon its 
being so. 

" c And now what conclusion is to be drawn from Tilton's 
"thunderbolt" on one hand and Mrs. WoodhulPs vaunted 



AND EVER IS JUSTICE DONE. 109 

"bombshell " on the other? I am sony to say I have little 
confidence in the strict veracity of either account.' 

"'Cut Clark, apparently unwittingly, has let the cat out of 
the bag, since does he not say, ' Tilton's Thunderbolt ? That 
is sufficient. It cannot be Clark's Thunderbolt if it be Tilton's; 
and, moreover, does he not say that he has very little confi- 
dence in the strict veracity of it? And if he has as little in 
my bombshell, I can afford to wait yet a little longer. I know 
the truth will come out uppermost, and I court its coming. 
Almost everybody else who is concerned in the affair seems to 
be using the most superhuman exertions to ' squelch ' the 
whole tiling. So much, at all events, would appear at present 
to stand in my favor; and those who have seen fit to daub me 
all over with contemptous epithets, will have more cause to be 
ashamed of them in the future than I have now. I can afford 
to stand under the implication of having ' belied Mrs. Davis,' 
and of having 'warped and stuffed out' Mrs. Stanton, because 
I know that 

" ' Ever the right comes uppermost, 
And ever is justice done." 

Of that part of the Thunderbolt devoted to Mrs. "Woodhull, 
this gifted, but singular woman says: — 

"Were it not for a single point, I should pass without notice 
1 The fall of the Thunderbolt on Woodhull herself,' and as that 
is the special one that — more than all others — causes me to 
doubt the thorough honor and consistency of Mr. Clark, I will 
touch it first, although in order of succession it should be last. 
He says : ' Its proprietors have lately had the kindness to pub- 
lish my circular without request or leave. Its advertisements 
arc gratuitous blinds.' Mr. Clark must surely have forgotten 
himself to have made this fling at me, to which I make bold to 
say, the most debauched Bohemian in New York would not 
have stooped. Even had I published his circular without 
request or leave, he ought, as a gentleman, to have accepted it 
as a journalistic courtesy, and refrained from dragging it into 



110 WOODEULL DEFENDS HERSELF. 

this controversy. Besides, what has it to do with the question 
at issue ? Does that have any bearing upon the truth or fal- 
sity of the Scandal ? I confess I cannot see that it does. My 
' ignorance ' may, however, prevent me from seeing it. What 
business had Mr. Clark to do this thing ? But it happens that 
I did not publish his circular without request or leave. Mr. 
Clark, in a letter to me, sent a dozen of his circulars, and in 
the letter requested me to notice their contents. Instead, how- 
ever, of writing any notice, I ordered the circular, or parts of it, 
published. It may barely be possible that this may have slip- 
ped his memory ; but on no other ground can I forgive so out- 
rageous a breach of courtesy. 

" And, pray, what have my ' other moods ' to do with the 
effect of * The Thunderbolt upon Woodhull ;' and what, pray, 
upon the truth or falsity of the Scandal, which Mr. Clark has 
taken specific pains to assert, ' as having honestly sought 
nothing but truth in scrutinizing the Beecher-Tilton Scandal ?» 
Suppose I am * out of my head / that I am an enthusiast / 
that I see ' angels ' or ' demons / that ' I swagger like a pirate/ 
and ' scold like a drab,' what has all that to do with arriving 
at the truth of the Scandal ? Can Mr. Clark inform me ? 
Perhaps he may be cajoled into furnishing me the facts in his 
possession about this swaggering and scolding. If he can, I 
will make all possible haste to publish them. Come, Mr. Clark, 
you have said this ; now send on the facts, because I am 
anxious to be well informed regarding myself upon these 
points as you seem to be. 

"And why does he seek to belittle me by saying I am 'igno- 
rant/ that I never write my ' great speeches' or 'stirring edi- 
torials ? How can he know all this ? The resort to this con- 
temptible meanness by my enemies to endeavor to injure me 
in the esteem of those who can only know me by repute, is the 
best possible evidence that they can find no better means by 
which to attempt it. For two years I have stood before the 
world, almost alone, as the pronounced advocate of social free- 



SEE BLO WS EER WN HORN. HI 

dom, and I have been the butt of ridicule, of abuse and of cen- 
sure from almost everybody who writes for the public press, 
and now, at this late day, when, still almost alone, I am fight- 
ing the battle of a free press and free speech against the com- 
bined powers of state and church, it was entirely uncalled for 
on the part of Mr. Clark to enter the arena, and attempt to 
destroy any part of my strength, and to stab me in the back in 
the house of my friends. Perhaps this act of unkindness may 
be the very one to make it impossible to withstand the im- 
mense odds pitted against me, and I go a martyr to the Infer- 
nalism of the Christianity of the nineteenth century. But I do 
not intend that it shall accomplish this. I intend that Mr. 
Clark's effort to aid the enemies of reform in their crusade 
against it in my person shall fall dead upon the ears and hearts 
of every lover of freedom in the country. Had I been strong 
financially, and backed up by powerful friends ; had I been a 
man even lacking these, the reformatory world might have for- 
given Mr. Clark this ungenerous aid to the enemy ; but lack- 
ing all these, having to struggle personally against all sorts of 
obstacles, and with few friends who have the moral courage to 
stand pronouncedly and boldly with me, it was a most cow- 
ardly attack, and I am sorry, for Mr. Clark's sake, that the bit- 
terness of Theodore Tilton or of any body else should have 
been so potent with him as to induce him to stoop so ungener- 
ously ; and so on to the end, through all the rest of his presen- 
tation of me personally ; but I refrain from following him. 
The judgment of the reformers of the world will, however, 
do so, and it will be inexorable, since they will come, sooner 
or later, to know that Mrs. Woodhull is not ' only a tre- 
mendous horn that Col. Blood is now blowing in front of 
Jericho,' but that she, of all persons, insists on blowing her 
own horn." 

Mrs. Woodhull having noted, as above some of the " mis- 
representations," as she styles them, of the Thunderbolt, thus 
sums up her case : — 



112 MRS. TILTON NOT CONDEMNED. 

SUMMING UP. 

" It is desirable that a thorough summing up of the whole 
case should be made, a careful and just review of all that has 
transpired regarding it up to the present time, so that a just 
judgment of it, as it stands to-day, may be arrived at. This, 
however, is a task that time makes it impossible for me 
to perform to present in this week's issue of the Weekly. 

" But next week I shall do this. I shall go back to the 
starting point of this scandal to fasten its source were it 
belongs. I shall trace it from that source through all its 
ramifications up to date. I shall compare the various state- 
ments and facts which appeared previously to November 2nd 
with those that have been put forth since, and endeavor to 
find a solution for their discrepancies. And I think I am 
not presuming too greatly to say, that if any now have 
doubts as to the substantial truth of all that I said Novem- 
ber 2nd, they will be removed when the reviews shall have 
been read. 

" This will be done, however, with no view to the conviction 
if it must be so regarded, of Mrs. Tilton. I should have 
been glad never to have mentioned her name in the affair, but 
some one of the several I had at command had to be used. It 
was useless simply to charge Mr. Beecher with an offense. It 
was necessary to give the specifications upon which the charge 
was founded. I am glad, however, that in all the discussion 
that has grown out of it, her name has been seldom men- 
tioned, and I have yet to hear her condemnation from the 
lips of any one. 

" Had Mr. Tilton, or his friends for him, been satisfied to 
let the matter rest there, I should never have written another 
word as to the truth or falsity of the charge, so far as Mrs. 
Tilton is concerned. I was perfectly satisfied to have accom- 
plished what I aimed at — to establish the fact that Henry 
"Ward Beecher, notwithstanding his professions, is at heart and 
in practice just as much a Free Lover as lam; and that 



MRS. T1LT0N NOT CONDEMNED. 113 

Plymouth Church is a Free Love Church, and ought to stand, 
as it will have ultimately to do, side by side with me in the ad- 
vocacy of social freedom. Of this, since the appearance of the 
Thunderbolt, no sensible person can entertain a doubt. Mr. 
Beecher stands before the world as one who believes it his 
right as an individual to administer his social relations as 
pleases himself, and Plymouth Church as upholding him. 
This was all I desired, and the attainment of it has been made 
much sooner than I had any hope it would be. 

" But they have made the attempt to cast me into the lie, 
and this my own sense of right compels me to repel, and I 
shall do it with all the ability I can command in the use of 
facts already before the public; but as I have often said before^ 
I shall not be betrayed into a full showing of my case unless 
the course against me shall be such as to force me to it ; and 
I repeat, if that time ever come, there will be 'good reason to 
think the last trump has sounded, for I shall tell the whole 
truth though the heavens do fall, and though, with the rest, I 
go down in the general ruin.' And those who would be invol- 
ved in it know me too well to even imagine I will not keep my 
word to the very letter, 

"Victoria C. Woodhull/' 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DEVELOPMENTS DURING THE SUMMER AND FALL OP 
1873 — PLYMOUTH CHURCH CHARGES MR. TILTON WITH 
SLANDERING MR. BEECHER — MR. TILTON'S DEFENCE 
SUMMARIZED — THE ACTION OF THE CHURCH — MR. 
BEECHER'S DECLARATION THAT HE HAD NO COMPLAINT 
TO MAKE AGAINST MR. TILTON — ACTION OF THE SISTER 
CHURCHES THROUGH REV. DRS. STORRS AND BUDINGTON 
— THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THEM AND MR. 
BEECHER, THAT LED TO THE ASSEMBLING OF THE CON- 
GREGATIONAL COUNCIL. 

nP\UKINGr the summer of 1873, the damaging stories of 
-ff* the Woodhull and Claflin women traveled rapidly, 
until the " scandal " became a reproach to the Church and 
its pastor, and an annoyance to all Congregational Churches 
of the country. Many damaging additions were made to the 
original charges, and when there was surreptitiously published, 
what is known as the "Tripartite Covenant, n signed by 
Beecher, Bowen and Til ton, which will appear in full further 
on, the interest in the case was increased. The author does 
not deem it essential to dwell at length upon the action of 
Plymouth Church, in October of that year. Suffice it to say 
that charges were preferred by a member against Theodore 
Tilton, to discipline him for slandering the pastor of the 
church, of which it was supposed he was still a member. Mr. 
Tilton appeared, and offered to answer personally to Mr. 

114 




PLYMOUTH cnrRf'H. ORANGE STREET BROOKLYN', 



BEECHERS UTTER DENIAL. 115 

Beecher for any wrong he had done him. Mr. Beecher openly 
declared before the Church authorities that he had no com- 
plaint to make against Mr. Tilton. The latter gentleman de- 
clared that he had not for some time considered himself a 
member, having voluntarily withdrawn from attendance upon 
the services of the pastor ; yet, he was willing to waive this 
point, and answer any charge of slandering Mr. Beecher. 
Mr. Beecher, in the meantime, had caused to be published 
in the Brooklyn Eagle, the first denial of the allegations 
made : — 

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle : 

Sir, — In a long and active life in Brooklyn it has rarely happened that 
the Eagle and myself have been in accord on questions of common concern 
to our fellow-citizens. I am for this reason compelled to acknowledge the 
unsolicited confidence and regard of which the columns of the Eagle of late 
hear testimony. I have just returned to the city, to learn that application 
has been made to Mrs. Victoria Woodhull for letters of mine supposed to 
contain information respecting certain infamous stories against me. I have 
no objection to have the Eagle state in any way it deems fit, that Mrs. 
Woodhull or any other person or persons who may have letters of mine in 
their possession, have my cordial consent to publish them. In this connec- 
tion, and at this time, I will only add that the stories and rumors which 
have for some time past been circulated about me are untrue, and I stated 
them in general and in particular as utterly untrue. 

Respectfully, 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

The result of this action of the church, briefly stated, was 
the dropping of Mr. Tilton's name from the rolls and the 
declaration by the church that a member could at any time 
voluntarily sever his connection from the Society, and as Mr. 
Tilton had done so, and was no longer a member of the 
Plymouth Society, he could not be placed on trial for slander, 
and, therefore, the church had no jurisdiction in the matter. 
This course, on the part of the church, caused much concern 
to sister churches, and especially to Rev. Drs. Budington and 
Storrs. It has been charged against these distinguished 



He PRIVATE CONFERENCE. 

divines that their subsequent action in corresponding with 
Plymouth Church, and calling a council of all the churches, 
was dictated by a desire to tear Mr. Beecher down from the 
high position he had attained in Congregationalism, and get 
rid of arival whose popularity they envied. The author must 
confess that he can find no justification for this charge, or the 
subsequent one, that Rev. Dr. Bacon was prompted from sim- 
ilar motives to make the attacks in his New Haven address, 
and Ms articles in the Independent upon Mr. Til ton, and thus 
secure the publication of Tilton's story in self defence. 

But to return to the record of the events in the order in 
which they presented themselves to the public. This action of 
Plymouth Church regarding Mr. Tilton occurred in October. 
In the following January, Drs. Storrs and Budington held a 
private conference with Mr. Beecher, which was thought at the 
time to be of great importance, and likely to result in a settle- 
ment of the questions at issue, but which closed with a lively 
and argumentative correspondence, settling nothing, and leav- 
ing affairs in a more hopeless condition than before. The fol- 
lowing are the essential parts of that correspondence, minor 
details being omitted : — 

The first is a letter from Drs. Storrs and Budington to Mr. 
Beecher : 

Brooklyn, Jan. 7, 1874. 
Rev. H. W. Beecher : — Two principles are, in our view, 
essential to Congregationalism. The first is, that the local 
church is a brotherhood of believers, confessing Christ, in com- 
mon, as their Supreme Lord and Savior, and covenanting not 
only to worship together, but to watch over each other in the 
divine life and service. It follows, then, according to our view, 
that as one does not enter such a brotherhood by his own act 
alone, but also by the consent of the body, discerning in him 
the temper of Christ, so neither does he leave it b}* his own act 
alone ; but only as the brotherhood consents. It further fol- 
lows, according to our view, that "if one member of such a 
brotherhood is formally and publicly charged by another with 
grave offenses, directly impeaching his Christian character, 



BUDINGTON AND STORRS' LETTER. 117 

such accusation must be considered, until it is ascertained 
either that he is innocent, and so ma}' be retained with his 
honor vindicated, or that he is guilty, and so must, if possible, 
be reclaimed ; and that if, in the latter case, he prove unrepent- 
ant, he must be excluded from the brotherhood, as not being a 
believer, and therefore not properly one of its members. The 
second principle is, that each local church, while properly and 
entirely independent in the management of its own affairs, so 
long as it maintains the evangelical faith, and this mutual 
watchfulness among its members, is still in responsible fellow- 
ship with other such churches ; so that, if its faith should cease 
to be evangelical, or its assiduous care for the purity of its 
members should be given up, these churches may properly 
remonstrate with it ; and if it should persist, may withdraw 
from it the fellowship which had been pledged and maintained 
only on these essential conditions. Both these principles ap- 
pear to us Scriptural, Congregational, and indispensable to be 
maintained for the welfare of our churches, and for the honor 
of Christ. And both these principles have seemed to us to be 
overlooked and imperiled, in the recent action of Plymouth 
Church ; the first, in its action in the case of discipline issued 
by it October 31, when a member appeared to us to be released, 
without trial or censure, in the face of grave accusations ; the 
second, in the resolutions adopted by it December 5, affirming 
its entire independence of all other churches, in regard to its 
faith, order, and discipline. Our recent conversation with you 
has led us to infer that you do not regard these principles as 
denied by Plymouth Church, in its recent action ; that, in 3-our 
view, the difference between that church and other Congrega- 
tional churches is largely, if not wholly, one of methods and 
means, instead of principles. Will you let us know your views 
more full} 7 on these points? 

To make the points specific : — Suppose a member of the 
Plymouth Church to have been absent from the communion for 
a year, while still residing in the city, and then to have been 
formally charged by a brother in the church with having led a 
licentious life during that year, and when thus accused, to 
plead his voluntary withdrawal from the communion bar of 
investigation, would it be according to the customary methods 
and policy of Plymouth Church to accept that plea, to suspend 
inquiry as to the facts, and to drop his name from the roll with- 
out censure? Suppose, further, if you will allow the supposi- 
tion, that the church itself should omit from its Articles of 



H3 BEECEER 'S BEPL 7. 

Faith that one which affirms the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
or that which declares the Divinity of our Lord, would it still, 
in its own judgment or in yours, be entitled to claim that the 
churches before in fellowship with it should make no remon- 
strance, but should continue in the fellowship, without reference 
to its action? Wm. Ives Budington. 

R. S. Storks. 

" In reply to this, after full consultation with Plymouth 
Church, Mr. Beecher wrote : — 

POSITION OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH DEFINED. 

LETTER OP HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Jan. 14, 1874. 

My Dear Brethren : I heartily assent to the fact that one 
uniting with a church does so by his own voluntary act, and 
with the consent of the brotherhood ; and that when, in his 
judgment, it is his duty to leave it, it should for the sake of 
good order, of courtesy, and Christian kindness, be done with 
the assent of the church. But, I should dissent from any such 
view of membership as implied or asserted that in joining a 
church one so surrenders his personal rights that he is not at 
liberty to withdraw from it unless the church gives him back 
the right to do so. No church owns its members. No cove- 
nant is scriptural or reasonable which is in the nature of a legal 
contract. 

No word more happily expresses the idea of a church than 
that which you employ — brotherhood. The church is a peculiar 
form of family, only it has not a legal contract between its 
members as there is between husband and wife, nor legal rela- 
tions such as exist between parents and children. It is a vol- 
untary brotherhood for moral ends, in which the members are 
held by personal, affectionate, and sympathetic influences. 

In fact, it may be said that if it is not general usage among 
Christian churches for members to leave upon their own proper 
judgment and liberty, j-et it is so frequent as to show the prac- 
tical recognition of the right. The Covenant of Plymouth 
Church contemplates such facts, and does not bind men abso- 
lutely, but " so long as in the providence of God you shall 
continue among us." 

The fathers of Congregationalism were Englishmen, and 
though they cleared their minds of local prejudices in a won- 
derful manner by going back to scripture, yet the operation of 



DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCHES 119 

scripture to loose them from bondage is seen chiefly in regard 
to those points which were in controversy with Rome and those 
which had been instruments of oppression from civil govern- 
ment. It was impossible but that they should reflect the 
opinions and customs of their age in other things. It was, 
and is, the custom-law of England that persons in public trusts 
cannot resign. No member of Parliament can resign his seat. 
A legal fiction has to be used to get him out. He accepts the 
office, say, of Steward of The Chiltern hundreds ; as no mem- 
ber of Parliament can hold an office of profit and trust, this 
act voids his membership in Parliament. Sheriffs, constables, 
once elected, must serve. And, in general, the English custom 
is, once a member alwa}-s a member, except by some well- 
defined process. The power of an individual to leave office or 
position in corporate bodies was un-English. In America the 
very reverse doctrine and custom is universally established, 
and very important decisions have been rendered by our courts. 

As there is absolutely no teaching in Scripture on the right 
of a church-member to leave a local church, even though it does 
not consent, either from another, or to disjoin himself from all 
churches, no doctrine can be insisted upon authoritatively by 
Congregational churches on this point. 

I do not wish you to suppose that I advocate the common 
use of this ultimate right of the individual to exclude himself 
from the church. For social and moral reasons, on account of 
the true spirit of brotherhood, every one leaving a church 
should do it with respectful notice and assent. And, therefore, 
the ground taken by most Congregational writers of repute I 
should respect in practice. But if, in any extraordinary case, 
an individual member chooses to exercise his latent right, and 
goes forth into the world, or into another body, no church 
which professes to derive all its authority from Sacred Scrip- 
tures can make that act an offense ; and no amount of consent 
of Congregational writers s can forbid that which the Scriptures 
do not forbid, and which the laws of the land permit. 

"The second inference which you deduce from your first 
principle is, ' That if one member of such a brotherhood is 
formally and publicly charged by another with grave offenses, 
directly impeaching his Christian character, such accusation 
must be considered until it is ascertained either that he is inno- 
cent, and so may be retained with his honor vindicated, or 
that he is guilty, and so must, if possible, be reclaimed ; and 
that if, in the latter case, he prove unrepentant, he must be 



120 CHURCH 00 VERNMENT. 

excluded from the brotherhood as not being a believer, and, 
therefore, not properly one of its members.' 

" To this I would repty, that when charges have been made, 
and judicially entertained by the church against any recognized 
member of the church, and he shall then abandon the church 
for the sake of escaping investigation, it may be proper for the 
church, so f&r as is necessary, to vindicate its own good name, 
or for the relief of any who may have been wronged, to proceed 
with the case, and to declare its judgment. But to pursue such 
a one with pains and penalties, after his own withdrawal, would 
probably render all concerned actionable at law/ 

" But if one has gone out from the church for years — has 
not attended its services — is known to have changed his relig- 
ious views, and is known for years to have disavowed church 
membership, it is not the duty of the church, if charges should 
be made against such a one, to attempt to bring back under 
their jurisdiction, for the sake of trial, one whom, by long con- 
sent, they have treated as no longer a member. In Plymouth 
Church, express, and, as I think, wise provision is made to 
prevent the frequent occurrence of trials, which, m so large a 
membership, might naturally take place.' [The functions of 
the Examining Committee are here explained.] 

" Any representation to }<ou that proceedings against a mem- 
ber of Plymouth Church had been terminated by his withdrawal 
to escape investigation or withdrawal for an}^ other reason 
from a recognized membership, while under judicial progress, 
is w r ide of the truth. The only fact out of which such a report 
could have arisen is that the Examining Committee, in investi- 
gating charges against persons long absent and long ceased to 
be recognized members, have reported that charges should not 
be entered upon with judicial process on account of the virtual 
non-membership of the parties.' 

" Tiie only point on which there seems likely to be a differ- 
ence of principle is the inherent right of a man to leave a church 
when he regards it as his duty to do so. Practically, we 
agree. For obvious reasons the separation should be a mutual 
act. But at the bottom there lies a principal of individual 
right and liberty which no covenant should restrain and no 
church take away. In regard to fellowship I would say in gen- 
eral : 

1. That I regard the fellowship of churches as highly impor- 
tant, and to be cherished, and to be developed by such a use 
of it as shall make each church feel the light and warmth of 



THE TRIAL OF CHURCHES. 121 

love which God has kindled in every other. Fellowship is the 
interchange of love and sympathy and mutual service between 
neighboring churches, and it should exist among all churches, 
of whatever sect, but especially between those of the same 
faith and order. That this fellowship may develop itself in 
kindly suggestions, in affectionate advice, or even expostula- 
tion, 1 admit. For fellowship which virtually punishes, though 
the penalty be moral, is all the more oppressive on that very 
account, since in the progress of Christian civilization moral 
penalties are transccndently more painful, and if wrongly or 
unskillful!}* employed more oppressive, than any other punish- 
ment can be. 

2. Whenever any church shall openly and avowedly change 
the essential conditions upon which it was publicly received in- 
to the fellowship of neighboring churches, it is their right, 
either b} r individual action or by council, to withdraw their 
fellowship. If any church shall, by flagrant neglect, make it- 
self a cover for immorality, or shall exert a pernicious and 
immoral influence upon the community, or upon sister churches, 
they have a right to withdraw themselves from the contagion. 
Preceding disfellowship, in all such cases, there may be, and 
should be, such affectionate and reasonable inquiry as shall 
show that the evil is real — that the causes of it are within the 
control of the church, that the evil is not a transient evil, such 
as may befall any church, but is permanent, and tending to in- 
crease rather than diminish. 

3. I make a distinction between a withdrawal of fellowship 
by the will of individual churches and the arraignment of a 
church, and virtually putting it upon trial before a council. 
There is no power on earth that can try a sovereign church. 
By whatever name it may be soltened, and by whatever author- 
ities justified, the denunciation or excommunication of a church 
by recommendation is in derogation of its local independence, 
and is without warrant in the Word of God. The attempt to 
bring churches to trial has never been productive of good. It 
is likely in every way to produce mischief. There was never 
such an occasion to employ councils and to withdraw fellow- 
ship upon their recommendation as in New-England during the 
Unitarian controversy. But there was never a council called. 
While, then, I heartily believe in the fellowship of churches, I 
am mindful that it was through the claims of fellowship that 
the churches of old learned to exercise domination, and that 
there is an inherent danger in the disciplinary exercise of fel- 

6 



122 ' PLYMOUTH CHURCH INDEPENDENT. 

lowship which should put every lover of the liberty of the 
churches upon his guard. 

ki You next proceed to say that, in your judgment, both of 
the principles which you lay down ' have seemed to us to be 
overlooked and imperiled in the recent action of Plymouth 
Church ; the first in its action in the case of discipline, issued 
b} T it Oct. 31st, 1873, when a member appeared to us to be 
released without trial or censure, in the face of grave accusa- 
tions ; the second in the resolutions adopted by it Dec. 5th, 1873, 
affirming its entire independence of all other churches in regard 
to its faith, order and discipline.' In reply to the first state- 
ment, I would say that Plymouth Church never has taken the 
action alleged, It accepted a report of its Examining Com- 
mittee, dismissing the case of one under charges, and dropping 
his name from the roll, on the ground that he was not and for 
years had not been a member of the Church, and was, therefore, 
not within its jurisdiction. This is simpl}' a matter of fact. 
The person declared that he was not a member. The Church 
declared he was not a member. Is not the Church competent 
to determine its own membership? Does 4 fellowship ' allow a 
neighboring church to review and redetermine the action of a 
church in regard to a matter of fact ?' 

"In regard to the second point, viz : that ' resolutions were 
adopted by it (viz : Plymouth Church) affirming its entire inde- 
pendence of all other churches, in regard to its faith, order, and 
discipline,' } r ou have not quoted the resolutions passed by us. 
You have quoted almost verbatim Rule 1 of Plymouth Manual, 
which was originally published in 1848. The substance of this 
rule was before the council which aided in organizing Plymouth 
Church, and the council which helped to install me as its pastor ; 
on both of which councils Dr. Storrs took important parts. 
The original Rule in 1847 was this : 'This Church regards the 
Scriptures as the Only infallible guide in matters of church- 
order and discipline, and is therefore amenable to no other 
ecclesiastical boc^y.' 

" Within a year (1848) it took the form now in the Manual, 
and has kept it. I cannot see why, at this late da} r , you take 
exception to this rule of a quarter of a century's standing, as 
violating the principle of Fellowship. But if, through inadver- 
tence, } t ou quote the Manual, meaning, rather, to point atten- 
tion to our resolutions explanatory of these words, will 3011 
explain wherein you think that these resolutions differ from the 
doctrine laid clown by Dr. Dexter in his excellent work on 



VINDICATION OF TEE CEURCE. 123 

Congregationalism, quoted in the last answer of Plymouth 
Church to your letter?' 

[" Mr. Beecher then refers to the hypothetical cases, drawing 
these conclusions.] In short, I hold that a church should care 
for its erring members, and restore them if possible b} r moral 
influence ; that when they are incorrigible they he dropped from 
the roll, if no crime or glaring sin be imputed to them ; that if 
convicted of crime, they be expelled ; that if they go out, mean- 
time, of their own accord while under trial, that the church 
drop their name from the roll, with such other action as may 
in the circumstances seem needful for the vindication of the 
church, or of any of its members.' 

" I would, in reply to the other case proposed, say, that 
when any church has essentially changed those conditions on 
which fellowship was originally extended, it is the right of the 
churches to withdraw from it, as it is undoubtedly their right 
by arguing, preaching, or writing, first to endeavor to convert 
them to sounder views. But experience has, thus far, taught 
that it is wise to do this b\ r associated ecclesiastical action ; 
the experience of the churches in Massachusetts with reference 
to the Unitarians having shown that the end can be quietly 
reached by each church acting for itself, thus escaping these 
liabilities to the usurpation of authority and the domination 
of the churches, which alwa3'S attend large convocations of 
ministers, and the consciousness, on their part, that the} T repre- 
sent and wield the moral convictions of large bodies of men. 
Ecclesiastical history reveals not a single instance of beneficial 
results from an attempt to discipline a church by associated 
ecclesiastical action. H. W. Beecher. 

This was not at all satisfactory to Rev. Drs. Storrs and Bud- 
ington, who were believed to represent the sentiment of sister 
Congregational churches, and they replied as follows, suggest- 
ing the council that was subsequently held: — 

Brooklyn, N. Y., Jan. 26, 1874. 
Rev. H. W. Beecher : — On the subject of church-member- 
ship, j'ou hold, as we understand you, that every member has 
the right to leave a church, at any time, for another church, or 
for the world ; that the exercise of this right is not conditioned 
upon the consent of the church ; that the covenant into which 
he entered, in joining the church, was only the expression of 
his then present intention and purpose ; and that his separation 



124 FELLOWSHIP OF CHURCHES. 

from the church is completed with his own act or volition in 
retiring, the church having simply to drop his name, in accord- 
ance with his will. This seems to us a principle wholly un- 
known to Congregationalism, and contradicted by its history 
from the beginning ; the admission of which would render impos- 
sible the administration of Christian and orderly discipline ; the 
prevalence of which would absolutely dissolve the bands of 
church association. 

We say we should be content with a deliverance upon these 
two questions ; for what you say in your letter on the subject 
of fellowship seems to us so far just and comprehensive as to 
warrant the belief of a substantial accordance between us. We 
differ from 3*011 widely, it is true, in regard to special points 
connected with 3'our expression of your views — as, for example, 
in regard to the argument which 3*011 derive from the action 
and experience of the churches in Massachusetts in the Unita- 
rian controvers}'. But it is aside from the purposes of this 
correspondence to consider the history and results of that case 
and we refrain from giving the reasons why we think a council 
expedient when serious divergencies take place between our 
churches. You seem to us, however, to lay down the essential 
principle involved in the communion of churches where you say, 
" Whenever any church shall openly and avowedly change the 
essential conditions upon which it was publicly received into 
the fellowship of neighboring churches, it is their right, either 
by individual action, or by council, to withdraw their fellow- 
ship." Upon this wc gladly unite, as well as upon what 3-011 
say as regards the necessity of " affectionate and reasonable 
inquiries preceding disfellowship." As respects, therefore, this 
question of the independency or fellowship of the churches, we 
have only to ask if you will favor the introduction into your 
new church-manual of some declaration similar to the above 
quotation from your letter? The resolution adopted Iry 3'our 
church, December 5th, seems to make a corporate declaration of 
this kind important and needful. This would leave 011I3* two 
subjects upon which we do not find in your letter an3' basis of 
agreement. Would you be willing, therefore, to use 3-0111* influ- 
ence with 3'our church to unite with our churches in asking the 
advice of a council, mutually called, upon these two questions 
namely : 

1. Does the order and usage of Congregational churches per- 
mit a member who has entered into public covenant with a 
church, to terminate his relations with that church, 03- his own 



PRELIMINARY TO A COUNCIL. 125 

volition or act, so that no action on the part of the church is 
requisite to such termination of membership? 

2. Was the action of Plymouth Church on the 31st October, 
1873, in dropping a member against whom grave and specific 
charges had been formally presented, an action in accordance 
with" the usages of Congregational churches, and with their 
understanding of the rule of Christian discipline? 

Wm. Ives Budington. 

R. S. Storks. 

The above called forth from Mr. Beeclier the following reply 
showing his willingness for a council of the churches, but 
expressing the opinion that Plymouth Church would not 
assent to it. 

Brooklyn, Feb. 8, 1874. 

My Dear Brethren - : — I am gratified that you find in my 
letters so much that you approve. The kind tone of your 
reply leads me to hope that a basis of mutual agreement may 
be found. I proceed at once to the points which you have 
made. With only a single addition, I accept the first article to 
be submitted to a mutually called council (should our three 
churches conclude to call one). As it now reads it is, "Does 
the order and use of Congregational Churches permit a mem- 
ber who has entered into public covenant with a church, to 
terminate his relations with that church by his own volition or 
act, so that no action on the part of the church is requisite to 
such termination of membership?" I would suggest that the 
question read, " Does the Word of God, and the order and 
usage of Congregational Churches," etc. You are aware that 
I regard the right to withdraw on the part of an individual as 
a latent right, not ordinarily to be used, and like the right of 
self-defense, to be used only in extreme cases. I would there- 
fore suggest that "in any case," be inserted, thus: "to termi- 
nate, in any case, his relations," etc. 

"In regard to the second point: I would suggest that the 
thing aimed at be stated as a question of usage, and not as a 
historical question. If it can be put into a form which shall 
leave out the particular casa of Plymouth Church, and be made 
general, I shall, for myself, be heartily glad to hear the opin- 
ions of a Council upon it. But as it stands, it would be very 
difficult to induce the Plymouth Church to assent to it. I 
would suggest something like the following : " May a Church 



126 STOBRS AND B UDINQTON DISAPPOINTED. 

according to the Word of God and the usages of the Congre- 
gational Churches, exercise its own discretion in dropping 
from its roll the name of one against whom serious charges are 
preferred, but who declares himself not to be a member of the 
Church; or must the Church, according to the Word of God 
and Congregational usage, go forward with the trial of charges, 
to a final issue. 

I will mention two points in which we regard your internal 
economy as unwise, and which could be easily corrected by the 
insertion in the respective manuals of your Churches of some 
such rule as this : 

1. That at every business meeting of the church a Chairman 
be chosen by the brethren. 

2. That no action involving the interest of other churches 
shall be taken, except at a meeting publicly called from the 
pulpit on the Sunday preceding the meeting. 

These changes, or some equivalent, would take away from 
the minds of our people the impression that you are attempt- 
ing a legislative authority, and will bring our churches together 
in such amicable consultation as could not but restore the 
cordiality which once existed between us. In all this letter I 
have given you my own view and not that gathered by confer- 
ence with the brethren of the church. 

Henry Ward Beecher. 

Despairing of settling the questions of church discipline 
involved in the correspondence, the Eev. Drs. Storrs and Bud- 
ington closed the correspondence as follows: — 

Brooklyn, K. Y., Feb. 10, 1874. 

The Rev. H. W. Beecher — Dear Brother : — It was the aim of 
our last letter to reduce the points of difference .between us to 
the minimum, and to meet you, as far as we could, without 
surrendering principles dear to us and, as we think, to all our 
churches. We are disappointed, consequently, to find that you 
cannot unite with us upon either of the three propositions 
submitted. 

Your proposition that our churches should change their 
manuals in certain particulars, as an inducement to Plymouth 
Church to adopt your statement on the subject of fellowship 
between churches, concerns matters which have never been in 
discussion between us, and appears to us wholly irrelevant. 

The matter of fellowship with other churches is a matter 



CORRESPONDENCE CLOSED. 127 

directly concerning those churches. Plymouth Church has 
adopted a resolution designed expressly to declare its relations 
to other churches. You have interpreted this resolution in a 
sense materially different from its obvious import, as it appears 
to us. Inasmuch, however, as this is only a private statement 
of your personal opinion, it seemed to us legitimate, indeed 
necessary, to inquire if the Plymouth Church would accept 
and affirm the doctrine which you lay down? If not, or if it 
will do this only on some impossible conditions, then the ex- 
pression of your personal views on the subject does not alter 
or affect the public attitude of your church toward ours and 
others. 

We should feel constrained, consequently, to add a third 
question to the two we propose, for the advice of a council, a 
question concerning the proper relations of our churches to 
yours, in view of its resolution of December 5th; and it seems 
to us indispensable that some declaration be made on the sub- 
ject of Fellowship, as on the others. 

We regret that the three propositions, submitted to you in 
our letter of the 26th inst, as a possible basis of agreement, 
are not satisfactory to you; and as we cannot surrender them, 
or modify them in any important particular, there is probably 
no occasion, in view of your many engagements and ours, for 
further protracting our correspondence. 

Wm. Ives Budingtok, 
K. S. Stokrs. 

This correspondence clearly established the fact that Ply- 
mouth Church would not recede from the rules it had laid 
down in the case of Mr. Tilton's withdrawal from the church, 
and rendered necessary the convening, a few weeks later, of the 
Congregational Council which took full cognizance of the 
facts in dispute, as will be seen by a perusal of the ensuing 
chapter. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ASSEMBLING OF THE COUNCIL OF CONGREGATIONAL 
CHURCHES — THE INVITATION TO PLYMOUTH CHURCH TO 
EXPLAIN ITS ACTION IN DROPPING MR. TILTON'S NAME 
FROM THE ROLLS — THE DECLARATION BY PLYMOUTH CHURCH 
OF ITS INDEPENDENCE — THE VERDICT OF THE COUNCIL — 
A REVIEW BY REV. DR. BACON. 

npHE Council of Congregational Churches assembled March 
-*- 24th, in the Clinton-ave. Church, Brooklyn. It was no 
ordinary gathering, but was noteworthy on account of its unu- 
sual size and the distinguished character of a large number of 
the delegates present. The permanent organization of the 
Council resulted in the election of the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon 
of New Haven, and the Hon. C. I. Walker of Detroit, as the 
Moderators, and the Rev. Dr. Alonzo II. Quint of New Bedford, 
Mass., and the Rev. I. C. Meserve of Brooklyn, as Scribes. 
Immediately upon the completion of the organization, the 
question of inviting Plymouth Church to a mutual council, or 
to sit in the Council, was raised. Prof. E. C. Smythe, of 
Andover Theological Seminary, presented resolutions favoring 
the representation of that church by pastor and committee, for 
the purpose of making such statements as they might wish, 
and of answering such questions as the Council might have to 
ask; in other words, to have the same opportunities in the 
Council as the other two churches. This opened a hearty but 
good-natured discussion, which continued for two hours, and 

128 



PL YMO UTH CHURCH SUMMONED. 129 

in which the question as to the exact nature of the Council 
was raised. The Rev. Dr. Storrs set this at rest by stating that 
neither an ecclesiastical, mutual, nor ex parte council had been 
called, and if this was not an advisory Council it was nothing. 
The discussion then turned upon the kind of invitation to be 
extended to Plymouth Church. Substitute after substitute 
was offered to Prof. Smythe's resolution, and when brought to 
a vote were successively defeated; and it became apparent that 
the good sense of the assembly favored the fullest courtesy to 
Plymouth Church, and when Dr. Storrs advocated such a 
course it became certain that Plymouth Church would have 
an opportunity to be fully and freely heard. Warm speeches 
were made on both sides; questions of order were raised, and 
at times a dozen delegates were on their feet at once. But the 
ease of the chairman, Dr. Bacon, and his familiarity with Con- 
gregational usage, of which some of the delegates seemed to 
have little conception, kept the delegates in good humor, and 
helped dispatch the business of the meeting, which had other- 
wise threatened to be well-nigh interminable. Prof. Smythe's 
resolution was finally carried by a very decisive vote. The 
author does not wish to inflict upon the reader a long report of 
the deliberations of this eminent body, but will merely quote 
the action and correspondence bearing upon the case. The 
following is the summons to Plymouth to answer: — 

In Ecclesiastical Council convened by letters from the Church 
of the Pilgrims and Clinton Ave. Congregational Church, Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., March 24, 1874, in the house of worship of the 
Clinton Ave. Church, it was 

Resolved, That the Plymouth Church be invited, with the 
consent of the committees of the churches, to present its views 
orally before the Council on the questions presented in the Let- 
ter Missive by its pastor and such committee as it may appoint, 
and b}' the same committee to furnish such information con- 
cerning the action referred to in these questions as the Church 
may request. 

It was voted that the Rev. Egbert C. Smythe, D. D., and the 
Scribe of the Council be a committee to present this resolve to 
Plvmouth Church. Alonzo II. Quint, Scribe of the Council. 

Brooklyn, JSf. Y., March 24, 1874. 



130 THEIR ANSWER. 

To tins exhortation, after mature deliberation, Plymouth 
Church made the following response. 

Reverend and Beloved Brethren and Fathers in God: 
Having been notified by the Church of the Pilgrims and the 
Clinton Avenue Congregational Church of your assemblage, 
under their call, for purposes specified in their Letters Missive, 
and having received from those churches an invitation to appear 
before you by our pastor and a committee, simply for the pur- 
pose of correcting any statements of fact which might seem to 
us erroneous, and furnishing any further and specific informa- 
tion which 3^ou might request ; and having declined this invita- 
tion on the ground that these churches thus called us before a 
council in the convening of which we had been permitted to take 
no part, in which we had never been offered the rights of equal 
members, in which it was not proposed now to give us the rights 
even of ordinary defendents, we nevertheless desire, out of our 
respect and love for you, beloved brethren and venerable 
fathers, to make a brief statement of our position, and to lay 
this our solemn protest before } r ou. 

" It is not against your convening or organizing as a council 
that we desire to remonstrate. So far as the Letters Missive, 
under which 3^011 have assembled, state matters which do not 
relate to an3^ other church than the two churches issuing those 
Letters, we make no complaint. We do not even object to the 
consideration in 3 r our bod3' of the question whether those two 
churches have made a mistake in their manner of approaching 
us, and therefore owe us an apology, instead of our owing them 
an explanation. [Applause.] Although this is a question in 
which we, as a church, have some interest, yet an ex parte dis- 
cussion of that point, for the sole enlightenment of those breth- 
ren, may be of great profit to them, and cannot seriously 
encroach upon the rights of Congregational churches at large.' 

" Neither do we object to the consideration of the abstract 
questions submitted to 3 7 our bocly. Bearing as these questions 
doubtless do upon the internal economy of the two churches 
which have called 3^011, it is for 3-011 to decide whether there are 
difficulties arising, or likely to arise, within those churches of 
sufficient importance to justify^ their asking for advice upon 
those points, in the light of which they may judge of their own 
past acts, and guide their future course. We are bound to pre- 
sume that such is the case.' [Applause.] 

" But when tlury call upon you to examine into our action 
6* 



THEY PROTEST. 131 

for their edification, a far different issue is presented. You 
have been called to determine whether the action of Plymouth 
Church, in a specified case, was justifiable, whether our pastor's 
name was left without proper vindication, and whether we are 
to be retained in the fellowship of Congregational churches.' 

" Brethren, we approach this part of your duties, if we know 
anything of our own hearts, in a spirit free from all personal 
motives. We will not pretend that, at all times past, we have 
felt unconcerned for ourselves as a church, or for that member 
of our church who, by reason of long and faithful service, and 
of his signal success in bringing home to our hearts a living 
and ever-present Savior, has become to us the best beloved of 
men. [Repeated applause.] But these things are of the past. 
The Lord hath given us peace and strength, and we rest in Him, 
with absolute confidence, and absolute content.' 
" But we still owe a dut}- to our weaker brethren. [Laughter.] 
Not every church could pass through such a storm in safety. 
Not every church could withstand the decrees of a council so 
worthy of respect as 3-ours, even though the council were known 
to have been called ex parte, and informed erroneously. Lest, 
therefore, our silence should leave the wa} r open for the 
oppression of other churches, less powerful and less united than 
our own, we speak.' 

" In the name of our Congregational policy — in the name of 
our feebler brethren — in the name of justice, even as adminis- 
tered by those who know not God — but above all, in the name 
of that God — whose throne is seated in justice and judgment, 
we protest against any action whatever by this Council, upon 
any issue relating to Plymouth Church. 

" (Long and hearty applause followed the reading of the 
sentence, and caused Mr. Beecher to sa}*, ' Brethren, you'll 
wear out your hands before you get through ;' Mr. Halliday 
broke in with, ' and the Council too.') 

" And this we do for the reasons following, as well as for 
others, to set forth which, time would fail.' 

" First : This is an ex parte council, convened without any 
regular and sufficient steps to obtain a mutual council — with- 
out any refusal upon our part to join in such a council — called 
to consider our affairs for the sole instruction of two other 
churches, and carefully fettered, so as to make it impossible, 
by the terms of its call, for the Council to alter itself into a 
mutual council. Yet it is a well-known and fundamental rule 
of Congregational polity that no ex parte council can be called 



132 OBJECTIONS URGED. 

until a mutual council has been distinctly offered and clearly 
refused, and that every ex parte council should be at liberty, 
and should offer to make itself a mutual one. 

" Second: If it is claimed that one or more churches, acting 
on the pretext that they are not in controvers}- with a sister 
church, and desire instruction only for themselves, may call a 
council to instruct them as to their relations with that church- 
free from the rules governing the call of ordinary ex parte, 
councils, this claim appears to us subversive of the whole sys- 
tem of mutual councils. If this Council has been regularly 
called and is competent to advise the churches calling it as to 
their duty toward us, then our pastor can call a council, with- 
out consulting us, to advise him publicly what is his duty 
toward his church. We have inquired in vain for a precedent 
of this kind, and have every reason to believe that none can 
be found. The present case is a most dangerous innovation, 
which, if sanctioned by the churches, will do more to disorgan- 
ize Congregational polit}- than all the alleged errors of Ply- 
mouth Church could do, if ten times repeated. 

" Third : This Council is summoned to advise, precisely as 
we were originally summoned to take advice, under distinct 
menace and moral coercion. Just as Plymouth Church was in 
one breath requested to explain the facts, and informed that it 
must be cut off unless the facts had been misreported, so this 
Council is called upon to advise whether the action of Plymouth 
Church has been conformable to Congregational usage, and is 
at the same moment informed that, if such is indeed Congre- 
gational usage, the two churches ' cannot sustain such a 
position,' that it would be ' entirely unreasonable to expect it 
from* them, that ' even if they could continue to hold it in 
view of the past, the}- should feel it indispensable to be extri- 
cated from it in forecast of what may occur in the future,' that 
' such a position is simplv insupportable,' and that ' if this is 
to be Congregational practice, many churches [clearly meaning 
their own] will certainly prefer to identify themselves with 
some other communion.' 

" While we do not for a moment assume that such threats 
will intimidate you, any more than the threats, which for nearly 
a year past have been uttered from the same quarter, intimi- 
dated us, yet we conceive it possible in the future that a com- 
bination of large powerful churches might select a council of 
weak and dependent ones for the purpose of crushing one still 
weaker ; and in such a case, menaces like these would have a 



CONG REG A TIONALISM. 133 

controlling and disastrous effect. We resist them now, when 
they seem to us idle and vain, lest they should be left by our 
silence to be drawn into a precedent fatal to the liberty of 
other churches. 

" Fourth: Officers- of the great institutions to which Con- 
gregationalists have been accustomed to contribute most 
liberally — the Home Missionary Society, the Congregational 
Union, the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and 
others — having been invited to attend this Council, in which 
their wisdom, experience, and devotion to the great work of 
the Church make them distinguished and valuable members, 
are singled out for special and almost personal dictation, and 
are warned in most pointed language that the callers of this 
Council do not intend to contribute any more funds to the 
support of these Christian enterprises, if their theories of Con- 
gregational fellowship and discipline are not indorsed by this 
Council. 

" This attempt to pervert great missionary organizations 
into engines of ecclesiastical power, to stop the fountains of 
Christian benevolence, and to overawe members of councils by 
appeals to their fears for the special branch of the Lord's work 
in their charge, tends to destroy the moral force of all councils, 
and constitutes an assault on the independence of both the 
churches and the societies, entirely without parallel in the his- 
tory of Congregationalism. [Applause.] 

"Fifth: In so far as this Council is called to consider the 
points of conflict between Plymouth Church and neighboring 
churches, the whole frame of the Council, in its widespread 
constituency and national character (so appropriate and ad- 
mirable if called only to deal with large and general questions) 
is directl}- in opposition to the genius of Congregational polity, 
one great aim of which is to confine local troubles to their own 
locality, and to settle them in the neighborhood, by the aid of 
neighboring churches, without spreading the tale of local dis- 
sensions over the whole land. 

u /Sixth: The charges brought against this church are partly 
based upon the reported speeches of its pastor, although it is 
well known that Plymouth Church, with the hearty concurrence 
of its pastor, has from the beginning of its histoiy declared 
that no man, however beloved and revered, may usurp the 
rights of the brotherhood, and has always insisted, and does 
now insist, that by its own acts and' declarations, and b}' these 
only, it will be judged. And the maintenance of this rule with 



134 VIE W8' OF PL YMO UTH. 

respect to all churches, we hold to be an essential part of Con- 
gregational polity. 

" Seventh: It is proposed virtually to arraign this church for 
alleged violations of Congregational usage. But Congrega- 
tional usage itself derives its sole authority from the Word of 
God ; and no Council may call to account a Congregational 
church for the alleged violation of principles not declared by 
the Word of God. 

" Nor can we assent to any action by which the tradition of 
the elders shall be placed upon even equal grounds with the 
commandment of God, nor agree to receive for doctrines the 
commandments of men. And we therefore protest against any 
attempt to formulate the usages of churches into a code of 
ecclesiastical law, to be placed on an equality with the Word 
of God, as binding upon the conscience of the churches. [Ap- 
plause.] In the presentation of the case to you, it happens 
naturally enough, from the fundamental error of the whole 
proceeding, that our views and practice in cases of discipline 
are not correctly stated. We shall not correct these errors of 
detail. Nevertheless, for the purpose of informing you frankly, 
as brethren beloved in the Lord, what are our views and prac- 
tice concerning church discipline, although not recognizing 
your power to act upon this subject, we append to this paper 
our past and present rules of discipline, and a declaration of 
our practice under them, adopted unanimously by this church, 
and representing not merely the course we have marked out 
for the future, but that which has been followed in the past. 

" Our doctrine of church fellowship is in like manner gravely 
misinterpreted. We have never claimed (as asserted) that 
' fellowship binds to silence the churches which have pledged 
it.' We have never denied the right of churches to offer to 
each other advice in a Christian spirit, nor the duty of churches 
to receive such an offer in the spirit of brotherhood. We have 
asserted the right of eveiy church, acting in the like spirit of 
fraternal love, while receiving the offer, to decline the advice 
and to judge for itself when, according to the laws of Christ, 
an occasion has arisen for exercising this right. And, having 
received an offer of advice which seemed to us to be tendered 
in a spirit not according to the mind of Christ, we did decisive- 
ly exercise our right, by declining to listen to advice conceived 
in such a spirit. Nor can we ever assent to an}' doctrine of 
church fellowship which shall be destructive of the liberty of 
the local church, or which shall convert that which the 



RELATIONSHIP TO CHURCHES. 135 

Lord ordained as a safeguard and an instrument of S3*mpath}', 
into an irritating espionage and an instrument of oppression. 

" But we rejoice to live in affectionate fellowship with all 
churches of the Lord Jesus, and especially with those who are 
in all things like-minded with us, holding to the same faith and 
order, not only in things fundamental, but in things less essen- 
tial, yet dear to us by conviction or association. In asserting 
that this church was not responsible for the doctrine, order, or 
discipline of other churches, we never for a moment intended 
to cut ourselves off from relationship to them. There is a cer- 
tain vague and general sense in which all Christians are respon- 
sible for one another. But this is not the sense in which the 
word is generally used. The responsibility of members of the 
same church for one another is the mildest form in which the 
word is commonly understood. And it was just that degree of 
responsibility between churches which we meant, and still 
mean, to deny. Members of a church can put each other on 
trial before the Church. We deny the right of an}- church to 
put another church upon trial before any ecclesiastical body 
whatever. [Applause.] 

"Yet we cheerfully admit that whenever any church shall 
openly and avowedly change the essential conditions upon 
which it was publicly received into the fellowship of neighbor- 
ing churches, or shall, by flagrant neglect, exert a pernicious 
and immoral influence upon the community or upon sister 
churches, it is their right, either by individual action or by 
council, to withdraw their fellowship. 

" We hold that preceding fellowship, in all such cases, there 
should be such affectionate and reasonable inquiry as shall 
show that the evil is real — that the causes of it are within the 
control of the church, that the evil is not a transient evil such 
as may befall any church, but is permanent and tending to 
increase rather than diminish. 

" It was with this meaning, and reasoning from this point of 
view, that we used the word ' responsibility.' We do maintain 
that we are responsible for no other church and to no other 
church. But Ave use these words in their ordinary and popular 
sense, and not with reference to all those shadowy grades of 
meaning which may possiblv be attached to them. In short, 
we used this language for the purpose of repelling dictation, 
and of relieving the conscience of other churches from a sense 
of any such responsibility as necessarily implied the right to 
dictate. The responsibility of affection we gladly accept ; the 



136 TILTON TO TEE COUNCIL. 

responsibility of authority, even in its lightest touch, we utterly 
repudiate. [Applause.] 

" We pray for the divine blessing upon 3-011 and j-our deliber- 
ations. We commit } T ou and ourselves to the care of the great 
Master, in whose service we are all united here, and who will, 
out of perplexities, conflicts, and doubts, bring us all into an 
eternal unity of love, and through love to peace. 

" This much, brethren and fathers, it was in our minds to say 
to you before receiving any other invitation than that of the 
two churches ; but having now received your invitation to appear 
before you by our pastor and a committee, we are constrained 
to decline, lest by our acceptance we should seem to renounce 
our conscientious convictions and to withdraw our solemn tes- 
timony against the violation of Christian liberty, courtesy, and 
equity which have characterized the calling of this Council and 
the steps which led to it, and lest we should establish a prece- 
dent full of danger to smaller churches, as encouraging irregu- 
lar and unwarrantable proceedings on the part of strong 
churches, which the weaker party might afterward, by the force 
of our example, be compelled to condone. We are not respon- 
sible for the errors which have been committed in the treatment 
of this Church and in the calling of this Council, and we are 
not willing to cover them with our consent. 

B3 r order of Plymouth Church. 

F. M. Edgerton, Moderator. 
Thomas G. Shearman, Clerk. 

Brooklyn, March 25th, 1874. 

Mr. Theodore Tilton sent, on March 27, a letter to the 
Council giving his position in the controversy. The follow- 
ing are the chief points of the communication : 

To the Congregational Council — Gentlemen", Clerical and 
Lay : As your honorable body are discussing a case in which 
1 am made to appeur a principal actor, you will accord to 
me the courtesy of contributing to your official records a 
correct statement of my own position; a privilege which I 
ask because my position has been misrepresented in your body, 
to my grievous injury. 

This misrepresentation touches two vital points : first: my 
attitude toward Plymouth Church; second: my action toward 
its pastor. I will make a plain statement of the facts bearing 
on both points. 



BELIGIO US LIBERTY. I37 

First: In 1S50 I became a member of Plymouth Church. 
In 1869 I terminated my connection with that church. In 
1873 my name, which still lingered on the roll, was officially 
erased. My retirement from the church was executed by me 
in strict conformity with a rule of the church; and the validity 
of my act has since been signally and repeatedly ratified by 
the unanimous vote of the. church, affirming and reaffirming 
the principle on which that act was based. That principle, as 
I hold it, is the free right of a free man to sever his connection 
with a church by his free will ; and I shall never become a 
churchman in any church in which this is not a rule. On the 
part of Plymouth Church, this same principle has been simi- 
larly stated as follows : 

Every man has an indefeasible right to separate himself 
from the church by his own sole act. 

It was this right, thus held and now championed by Ply- 
mouth Church, that I exercised in that church four years ago 
by that act, and on that principle I have ever since stood, and 
still stand; and I believe that if the discussion arising from 
this case shall result in stamping this principle into currency 
as a canon law among any considerable number of churches, I 
shall thereby have contributed by an accidental example, to 
further not a little the religious liberty of mankind. The 
affectionate loyalty which I bear to my father and my mother 
evermore reminds me that they belong to the church of whose 
liberty Roger Williams was the early champion in this coun- 
try; and it is the native blood within me that makes me 
jealous, to an extreme degree, of sacerdotal authority and 
ecclesiastical" bonds. No action of Plymouth Church, grow- 
ing out of my case, could have been more in consonance with 
my traditional convictions, or more gratifying to my ancestral 
pride, than that this church should have unanimously fol- 
lowed me into my retirement and invested my individual act 
with the moral majesty of a public precedent for the further 
enfranchisement of the human mind from church bonds and 
priestly powers. But whether you agree or disagree with this 
view, I request you to take special notice of the fact that what- 
ever doubts your honorable body may cast upon this method 
of voluntary retirement, or whatever such doubts may have 
existed in Plymouth Church at the time when I assumed and 
exercised this right four years ago, yet this assumption has 
since been ratified by that church on several signal occasions, 
and is now put forth by Plymouth Church as a cherished 
principle of its ecclesiastical polity. 



138 VOL UNTAR T RETIREMENT. 

Second: Four years after I had thus terminated my connec- 
tion with Plymouth Church, I was charged by a member of 
that body with "having circulated and promoted scandals 
derogatory to the Christian integrity of the pastor, and injuri- 
ous to the reputation of the church." A widespread impres- 
sion overshadowed good men's minds that whatever other points 
were in doubt, there could be no doubt that I had slandered 
the pastor of Plymouth Church. I hereby declare that I had 
not then, nor have I since, nor at any time in all my life have I 
ever uttered a slander against any human being. (Mr. Tilton 
then proceeds to quote, in support of his position, the letter of 
Mr. Beecher, published on the 2d of June, denying that Mr. 
Tilton was the author of the calumnies against him.) 

He then quotes his own letter sent to the Examining Com- 
mittee of Plymouth Church, explicitly denying that he had 
ever spoken against Mr. Beecher falsely, and asking for an 
examination. He then refers to his statement in Plymouth 
Church to the effect that if he had slandered Mr. Beecher he 
was ready to answer for it, and calling upon Mr. Beecher to 
speak, if he had any accusation to make against him. After 
alluding to Mr. Beecher's declaration that he had no charges 
to prefer against him, he concludes as follows : 

In conclusion, let me repeat the two points which the above 
statements prove, namely : 

First: That my voluntary retirement from Plymouth 
Church was wholly in accordance with the rule and spirit of 
that church; and 

Second : That my action toward the pastor has always been 
prompted by an honorable sense of what constitutes fair deal- 
ing between man and man. Yours, with respect, 

Theodore Tilton. 

Brooklyn, Thursday, March 26, 1874. 

The following are the Declarations of Principles and Rules 
of Discipline referred to in the report : 

Plymouth Church, believing that care in the admission 
of members is of more value in maintaining the purity of the 
church, than severity in dealing with them after admission, 
attaches great importance to the evidence given by candidates 
for membership of vital faith in Christ and of spiritual life 
begun. The Examining Committee must be satisfied upon 
these points before recommending the candidate to the church, 






PRINCIPLES. 139 

and letters from other churches are not accepted as substitutes 
for personal examination. All persons who enter Plymouth 
Church are, in effect, admitted upon profession of their faith. 

The active membership, numbering about two thousand 
three hundred souls, is so organized that a systematic watch 
and care is extended over all, in the form of visitation, inquiry, 
fraternal advice, encouragement, and assistance, and, in the 
case of non-resident members, by regular correspondence. "We 
recognize it also as our privilege and duty to reprove and 
admonish one another with all fidelity, provided it be in love ; 
and all these duties, while not neglected by the members of 
the church as individuals, are moreover laid upon special offi- 
cers of the church, and so distributed and discharged that no 
single member is omitted from this fraternal vigilance. 

"By the assiduous use of personal, social, and spiritual influ- 
ences, by preventing or healing disputes and reclaiming wan- 
derers, we seek to avoid the necessity of judicial discipline: 
and this we hold to be .not only wise policy but Christian obliga- 
tion. -Nevertheless, when these means fail, the discipline of 
this church is express and energetic. If any member of our 
body brings dishonor upon the Christian profession, we hold 
it our duty to reclaim him if possible, with all long-snffering 
and patience, but, if unsuccessful in this, to make it known 
that we are no longer responsible for the dishonor which he has 
brought or may bring upon the name of Christ.' 

" If any one desires no longer to be known as a member of 
this church, or as a professed follower of Christ, we hold that, 
while we cannot release him from the special obligations to 
Christ which he has assumed by the public profession of his 
faith, we may, and should, alter having endeavored to change 
his purpose, release ourselves from our responsibility to and 
for him, in whatever method the circumstances of the case 
may require, regard being had to the best good of the individ- 
ual, the well-being of the church, and the honor of the Master/ 

" While we are ready at a] I times to receive suitable inquiry 
and to give to sister churches every reasonable explanation 
concerning our action in cases of public interest, we hold that 
it is our right, and may be our duty, to avoid the evils incident 
to a public explanation or a public trial ; and that such an 
exercise of our discretion furnishes no good ground for the 
interference of other churches, provided we neither retain 
within our fellowship, nor dismiss by letter, as in regular 
standing, persons who bring open dishonor upon the Christian 
name. 



140 DISCIPLINE. 

RULES OF DISCIPLINE. 

7, As adopted April, 1848. 

Rule 5. No member can be deprived of church privileges except by 
regular process. The presentation of complaints may be first made to the 
Examining Committee, who shall, upon sufficient cause, prefer charges to 
the whole church, or the complainant may present his complaint in person 
to the church. When a member is accused he shall be seasonably furnished 
with a copy of the complaint, and shall have a full hearing. 

Rule 6. The censures which may be inflicted on offending members 
are, according to the aggravation of the offense, either (1) private reproof, 
(2) public admonition, (3) suspension, or (4) excommunication. In cases 
of excommunication notice thereof must bo given from the pulpit on the 
Sabbath. 

77. As amended in 18G5. 

Rule. 4. Discipline. — Members cannot be censured by the church, except 
by the process herein stated. A complaint may be made, either to the 
Examining Committe, or the whole church. In the former case, the clerk 
of the committee, and, in the latter case, the clerk of the church must 
reduce the complaint to writing, if it is entertained, and must use due 
diligence to forward a copy to the accused, and to give him personal 
notice of the time and place of hearing. The accused must have a full 
opportunity to be heard in his own defense. An accusation presented to 
the church must always be heard, either by the church or by the Examin- 
ing Committee, unless the application for a hearing is rejected at a meet- 
ing of the church by a three-fourths vote. 

Rule 5. — [Same as Rule G above.] 

Rule 7. [Adopted, 1859; amended 1871.] — Members may be dropped 
from the roll of the church, with or without notice to them, as may be 
deemed just, by a two-thirds vote of the church, upon the recommenda- 
tion of the Examining Committee, either upon their own application, or 
in case they have abandoned their connection with the church.by prolonged 
absence or otherwise, upon the application of any other person. 
III. As amended, in 1874. 
Rule 4. Discipline. — Members cannot be censured except by the pro- 
cess herein stated. 

1. Complaints must be made in writing either to the Examining Com- 
mittee or the whole church. 

2. If the complaint is made to the Examining Committee, the facts must 
first be investigated by it, so far as to determine whether there is reason- 
able probability that the charges can be sustained by proof. 

3. If the complaint is made to the church, it may order a similar inves- 



NOT ACCEPTED. 141 

ligation by the Examining Committee, or by special committee, before 
deciding to proceed. 

4. If the Examining Committee or church decide to proceed with the 
case, the clerk of the church must use due diligence to forward a copy of 
the complaint, to the accused, and, if practicable, to give him personal notice 
of the time and place of hearing. 

5. The accused must, in all cases, when a trial is had, have a full 
opportunity to be heard in his own defense. 

G. The church may refer any case of disc'pline to a committee to hear 
the evidence, and report its opinion on the whole case, or any part thereof. 

7. When a complaint is made to the Examining Committee, the accused, 
at his first appearance, may require the committee to submit to the church 
the question, whether the complaint shall be taken out of the committee 
for trial, and the committee cannot proceed meantime. 

8. Proceedings before the Examining Committee shall be kept private 
until otherwise ordered by the church ; and the committee, unless the 
complaint is sustained, or unless it desires instructions, or unless a report 
is ordered by vote of the church, shall make no report upon the case. 

9. No member of a committee can vote upon its final report in case 
of discipline, unless he has heard and read the evidence and arguments in 
the case, except by consent of both the complainant and the accused. 

10. If the evidence has been taken by a committee, the church is not 
bound to hear evidence on cither side. 

11. Einal censure cm be inflicted only by the church, and by concurrence 
of two-thirds of all present and voting. 

Rules 5 and 7 unchanged. 

"On motion the Moderator and Clerk by a vote of four 
hundred and eighty to nothing were directed to sign and 
transmit the documents to the Council, and Dr. Edward 
Beecher. II. TV. Sage, and R. W. Raymond were appointed 
messengers, when the meeting adjourned. 

This was not accepted by the Council and spread upon the 
minutes lor the reason that it was the sense of the Council that 
it was a matter of which they could not take cognizance. Mr. 
Til ton then said: 

Gentlemen, Clerical and Lay: I received yesterday the 
courteous note of your Moderator informing me of the techni- 
cal reasons why my communication to your honorable body 
could not be officially put on the minutes. I respectfully offer 
you this present brief letter as a substitute in the hope that it 



14:2 VERDICT. 

may be within the possibility of your acceptance for record. 
Among the five points which you are asked to decide concern- 
ing my case with the Plymouth Church the second will pass 
into permanent statement on your journal as follows: 

During the voluntary absence of a member from the ordi- 
nances, if specific charges of grossly unchristian conduct are 
presented against him by a brother in the church, to which 
charges he declines to answer, &c, 

The above statement, which has been constantly reiterated 
during your proceedings, implies that gross charges were 
made against me, and that these charges I declined to answer. 

Gentlemen of the Council, every man among you knows 
that I did not decline to answer. 

I ask you, therefore, as an act of justice to me, to permit 
the true record to accompany the false. Respectfully yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 

Brooklyn, Saturday, March 28. 

•The deliberations of the Council covered several days, and 
resulted in the verdict given below : — 

The Council has listened carefully to the Committees of the 
churches by which it was convened, and has received from 
them a clear and earnest statement of the aims and principles 
which have determined the action of these churches in the 
proceedings which they ask us to review. 

We have also received from the Plymouth Church a com- 
munication declining an invitation from this Council, as well 
as from the two churches, to appear by its pastor and the Com- 
mittee and assist in the presentation and discussion of the 
questions before us, but at the same time offering sugges- 
tions and arguments which we have carefully and candidly 
considered. 

We cannot doubt the right of these two churches to ask 
advice of us concerning the regularity and Christian character 
of what they have done in their dealings with the Plymouth 
Church. No church is beyond the reach of the public opinion 
of other churches, expressed either directly or through an 
ecclesiastical council. 

Any church in its essential and inalienable independence 
may in the exercise of a reasonable discretion consider any 
public action of any other church; may, in proper methods, 
express its approval or disapproval, and may make that public 
action the subject of friendly correspondence and remonstrance, 



THE AUG UMENT. 143 

or if need be, the ground of a temporary or permanent cessa- 
tion of acts of intercommunion. 

There has been laid before us a series of letters that have 
passed between these two churches and the Plymouth Church. 
On that correspondence it is our unquestionable right to have 
an opinion and to express it, though we have no right to try 
the Plymouth Church as a party before us. We have to say, 
then, that the letter of remonstrance and admonition with 
which the correspondence began was not uncalled for. 

The churches throughout the United States, and the general 
public also, felt a painful anxiety on a question imminent and 
urgent in this city of Brooklyn, and involving the honor, 
not of the Congregational churches only, but of Christianity 
itself. 

Without any explicit reference to that question, it will 
suffice to say that in the Plymouth Church a complaint was 
brought against a member that he had " circulated and pro- 
moted scandals derogatory to the Christian integrity of the 
pastor and injurious to the reputation of the church/' The per- 
son complained of appeared in the church meeting and declared 
that four years before that time he had by his own volition termin- 
ated his connection with the church; and thereupon his name 
was by a vote of the church dropped from the catalogue of its 
members. That action of the Plymouth Church was the 
occasion on which these two churches interposed, and with a 
request for a friendly conference. 

In this act they represented the interests of the fraternity of 
Congregational Churches, whose principles of discipline and 
whose fair Christian fame were endangered by the course which 
Plymouth Church seemed to be pursuing. 

For this moral heroism they deserve thanks, even should 
errors of judgment be traceable in some of the details of their 
procedure. In our consideration of the letter then addressed to 
the Plymouth Church, we find that the impression made by it wan 
in some measure different from what was intended by its 
authors. Written under the pressure of apprehensions and 
anxieties long suppressed, it seems to have impinged more 
faithfully than was intended on the sensibilities of those to 
whom it was addressed. To many the letter seems entirely 
unexceptionable in matter and in manner, and entirely appro- 
priate to the occasion; while to others it seems unnecessarily 
severe in the tone of its condemnation of the proceedings 
complained of. In their second letter the complaining churches 



144 THEY BO NOT AB VISE PL YMO UTH. 

having found what impression they had made by their remon- 
strance offered an explanation, which, we trust, was not unac- 
ceptable. Concerning the reply of Plymouth Church to 
that letter, we say nothing more than that an ingenuous 
explanation of the reasons which had prompted Plymouth 
Church to rid itself of an offending member by an exceptional 
method might have brought the correspondence to an early 
and happy determination. We can see no sufficient reason 
why the request of the complaining churches for a fraternal 
conference should not have been granted. 

In the subsequent correspondence we see on the part of the 
complaining churches an expression of their desire to unite 
with the Plymouth Church in referring the points of difference 
to the advice of a Council. 

We find on the part of Plymouth Church no definite expres- 
sion either of consent or refusal. Yet, inasmuch as the Ply- 
mouth Church did not distinctly refuse to unite on a refer- 
ence to a Council, we cannot but regret that the complaining 
churches did not urge their request till a refusal or an evasion 
should have become unequivocal. 

We are not invited nor do we take it upon ourselves to advise 
the Plymouth Church concerning its methods of dealing with 
offenders. But we are invited to advise tiiese two churches on 
certain questions. 

Therefore, we say distinctly that the idea of membership in 
a Congregational Church is the idea of a covenant between the 
individual member and the church; that by virtue of that 
covenant the member is responsible to the church for his con- 
formity to the law of Christ, and the church is responsible for 
him; and that this responsibility does not cease till the church, 
by some formal and corporate act, has declared the dissolution 
of the covenant. The covenant may be broken by the mem- 
ber. He may offend, and when duly admonished, may give 
no satisfactory evidence of repentance In that case, he is cut 
off from communion; the Church having given its testimony 
is no longer responsible for him, and he can be restored only 
by the removal of the censure. Voluntary absence of a resi- 
dent member from the Communion of the Church, and from 
its public worship, does not dissolve the covenant, but is a 
reasonable ground of admonition and, if persisted in, of final 
censure. 

When a regular complaint is made against such a member, 
that in some other respect he violates the laws of the Church, 



ACTION OF PL TMO UTE NOT A PRECEDENT. 145 

and especially when the complaint is that he has circulated 
and promoted scandals derogatory to the Christian integrity of 
the pastor and injurious to the reputation of the Church, the 
consideration that he has long ago forsaken the Church is only 
an aggravation of his alleged fault. 

In regard to the future relations between these churches and 
Plymouth Church, we express our hope that the very extraor- 
dinary proceeding which gave occasion for the correspondence 
and for this Council will not be a precedent for the guidance 
of that Church hereafter. Could we suppose that such pro- 
ceedings will be repeated, we should feel that the disregard of 
the first principles involved in the idea of church membership, 
and the idea of the fellowship of churches with each other, 
would require the strongest possible protest. But the commu- 
nication from the Plymouth Church to this Council makes 
professions and declarations which justify the hope that such 
deviation from the orderly course of discipline will not be 
repeated. 

The accused person in that case has not been retained in the 
church nor commended to any other church. 

We recite some of those declarations from the Plymouth 
Church which encourage the hope we have expressed: "We 
rejoice," says the Plymouth Church, to live in affectionate fel- 
lowship with all churches of the Lord Jesus, and especially 
with those who are in all things like-minded with us, holding 
to the same faith and order, not only in things fundamental 
but in things less essential yet dear to us by conviction or asso- 
ciation." '*We cheerfully admit that whenever any church 
shall openly and avowedly change the essential conditions upon 
which it was publicly received into the fellowship of neighbor- 
ing churches, or shall by flagrant neglect exert a pernicious 
and immoral influence upon the community, or upon sister 
churches, it is their right either by individual action or by 
counsel to withdraw their fellowship. We hold that preceding 
disfellowship in all such cases there should be such affectionate 
and reasonable inquiry as shall show that the evil is real, that 
the causes of it are within the control of the church, that the 
evil is not a transient evil, such as may befall any church, but 
is permanent and tending to increase rather than diminish." 

While it is not to be forgotten that this communication from 
Plymouth Church is entirely subsequent to the case as it stood 
upon the convening of this Council, when the Plymouth Church, 
by its action of December 5th, had declared itself responsible 



146 OBLIGATIONS Of FELLOWSHIP. 

for no other church, and no other church for it, in respect to 
doctrine, order and discipline, which action, as interpreted in 
the circumstances then existing, implied a withdrawal to the 
ground of total independency, yet that church is to be frater- 
nally judged by its latest utterance. 

These professions on the part of Plymouth Church may be 
accepted by other churches as indicating its intention to 
maintain an efficient discipline, and to regard the mutual 
^responsibility of churches. At the same time, the Council feels 
constrained to declare that these declarations seem to us incon- 
sistent with the resolution of interpretation adopted by Ply- 
mouth Church, December 5th, 1873, and with other acts and 
statements appearing in the published documents. We think 
that the action of that church, as presented in these docu- 
ments, if unmollified, would justify these churches in with- 
drawing fellowship. Yet, inasmuch as the Plymouth Church 
seems to us to admit, in its communication to us, the Congre- 
gational principles of discipline and fellowship, we advise the 
churches convening this Council to maintain with it the rela- 
tions of fellowship as heretofore, in the hope that Plymouth 
Church may satisfy these churches of its acceptance of the 
principles which it has been supposed to disavow. 

We also desire in this connection to reaffirm and emphasize 
the doctrine laid down in all our platforms of the obligations 
of Fellowship. This duty applies to all Christian churches. 
In the case of those instituted and united in accordance with 
the Congregational polity, it involves that more intimate com- 
munion which is exercised in asking and giving counsel, in 
giving and receiving admonition, and other acts relating to 
doctrine, order and discipline. 

This mutual responsibility of the Congregational churches 
has characterized their system from the beginning, distinguish- 
ing it from simple independency. 

With the autonomy of the local church it is one of the for- 
mative and essential principles of Congregationalism. Without 
it we have no basis in our polity for that system of cooperative 
effort to which our churches are pledged. We regard, there- 
fore, the principles of Fellowship which the pastors and 
churches convening us have so earnestly maintained to be those 
which we have received from our Father and the word of 
God. 

We appreciate and honor their fidelity to those principles 
under circumstances of peculiar and severe trial, and we offer 



DR. BACON'S LECTURE. U7 

our earnest prayer to the great Head of the Church that He 
may bestow upon them and the pastor and Church with which 
they have been in correspondence wisdom and grace; that He 
may guide them in all their actions, and that He may quicken 
in all our churches, through these painful trials, a spirit of 
renewed fidelity to the sacred obligations of our covenants and 
our church communion, and we pray that He to whom all 
power in heaven and on earth is given, and who has promised 
to be with His church always, even to the end of the world, 
and who, under the inspiration of His spirit and His truth 
has joined these churches in a grand and memorable past, 
standing shoulder to shoulder in the great moral and spiritual 
battles of the age, may again unite them in the future conflicts 
and victories of His kingdom. 

Leonard Bacon, > Moderators . 
C. L. Walker, j 

A. H. Quint, [ Soril)Gg 
J. C. Meserve, f fecriDes - 

Clinton Avenue Congregational Church, 
Brooklyn, March 28th, 1874. 

In April following the adjournment of the Council, Rev. 
Dr. Bacon delivered a lecture in New Haven before the middle 
class of Yale College upon the action of the Council. We 
extract it: 

I have been giving to the Senior Class a series of lectures, 
as they might be called by courtesy — more properly familiar 
talks — about the theory and practice of the Congregational 
Church polity. Having been requested by the Middle Class 
to interpose among my talks to them on American church his- 
tory an account of the Council which was held last week at 
Brooklyn, I propose to make use of that conspicuous example 
as an illustration of what I have been teaching more abstract- 
ly in general statements of the principles and usages which 
regulate either the self-government of our churches or their 
intercommunion. 

Remember the two principles, which, taken together and 
carried out into all their applications, are the Congregational 
polity. ^ 

1. Every stated and organized assembly of Christian dis- 
ciples and worshipers is a church full and complete, self-gov- 
erned under the law of Christ, and having in itself all church 
power. 



148 imAT IS A COUNCIL. 

2. There is an intercommunion of churches, and there are 
mutual duties which that intercommunion involves. As there 
is intercourse between independent States, each asserting its 
own sovereignty, so there is intercourse between churches mu- 
tually independent, and each maintaining its own self-govern- 
ment under Christ. As political sovereignties are responsible 
-one to another, so churches are mutually responsible. As there 
are principles of justice and comity which regulate the inter- 
course of nations and which are international law, so there are 
principles which ought to regulate the intercommunion of all 
churches, and which our churches profess to recognize. 

So much for preliminaries. We come now to our particular 
subject, the Brooklyn Council of 1874: 

I. What is a Council as understood and practiced by Congre- 
gationalists ? (Platform of 1865, Part III., Chapters 1, 2.) 

1. Not a permanent organization like a Presbytery or a 
Methodist Conference. It comes into existence for a special 
occasion, performs its work well or ill, and exists no longer. 

2. Not a governing body. It can inflict no censures in the 
technical sense. Its judgment on whatever subject takes ef- 
fect only as it is freely accepted and made effectual by the 
churches. 

3. Its function is to consult, to give light, to form and ex- 
press opinions concerning a given statement of facts, or con- 
cerning facts, which it ascertains by testimony — in a word, to 
advise. 

II. On what occasion and by what right was this council 
convened ? 

1. A certain proceeding in the Plymouth Church was public 
and (taken in connection with foregoing circumstances) scan- 
dalous, i. e. causing offense, an occasion of stumbling. It 
was a proceeding in which other churches had an interest. 

2. The two nearest churches — nearest in the intimacy of 
their relations to the Plymouth Church — interposed with uni- 
ted remonstrance. (Ought they not rather to have interposed 
in a closer analogy with the rule concerning personal offenses? 
first one, then two or three?) 

3. A correspondence ensued, with no satisfactory result — no 
explanation of the questionable proceedings. A proposal for 
a mutual council was made by the complaining churches, but 
was not accepted. 

4. The complaining churches thought they needed advice 
and therefore sought advice through this Council. (Platform 



GREAT UNANIMITY. 149 

1865, 'P. ITT, ch. ii.,sec. 7 (3),f. 52.) This was their right. 

III. What were the powers of the Council, and the limita- 
tions under which it acted ? 

1. It had not the power of a mutuaT council. The :o were 
no two parties before it. 

2. It had not the power conceded by Congregational usage 
to an ex parte Council. An aggrieved member or minority in 
a church may, under certain conditions (one of which is that 
a mutual Council shall have been distinctly refused by the 
other party, namely the church), invite the neighbor churches 
to review the action complained of, and to give advice concern- 
ing it. This was not at all a Council of that sort. The Ply- 
mouth Church had an interest in the case, but it was not a 
party to the proceedings. The Council could give it no ad- 
vice, still less arraign it for trial. 

3. The Council had just so much power as the constituent 
churches had committed to it, by sending their delegates in 
answer to the letter "Missive." That letter, with the subse- 
quent action of the churches invited by it, was its charter. 

4. Therefore it had no power to put the pastor of Plymouth 
Church on trial, directly or indirectly. It had as little power 
to vindicate him as to condemn him. It had no right to as- 
sume any other theory than that of his Christian integrity. 
Any statement that the result of the Council was in some way 
a vindication of that eminent minister is absurd. It was for 
the Plymouth Church to vindicate its pastor against a damag- 
ing imputation from one of its own members. But with great 
alacrity — the pastor himself consenting — it threw away the 
opportunity of vindication. 

IV. What were the points on which advice was sought from 
the Council ? 

In essence there were only two, presented under various as- 
pects in a series of questions, which the Council carefully con- 
sidered, voting upon most of them with great unanimity in 
their private session, though they did not think it necessary to 
answer those several questions, one by one, in their result. 

1. That act just referred to, in which the Plymouth Church 
threw away the opportunity of vindicating its pastor, was what 
gave occasion for remonstrance from neighboring churches. 
As stated in the Result of the Council it was this: "In the 
Plymouth Church a complaint was brought against a member 
that he had ' circulated and promoted scandals derogatory to 
the Christian integrity of the pastor, and injurious to the rep- 



150 WHAT WAS DONE 

titation of the Church/ The person complained of appeared 
in the church -meeting, and declared that four years before that 
time he had, by his own volition, terminated his a nnection 
with the Church; and thereupon his name was, by vote of the 
Church, dropped from the catalogue of its members." The 
regularity of this proceeding, that is, the consistency of it with 
the true idea of the relation between a Christian Church and 
its individual members, was the first point submitted to the 
Council for its advice. 

2. The advice of the Council on that point might be such as 
would make advice on another point necessary for the guidance 
of the complaining churches. If the action of the Plymouth 
Church in the case referred to was inconsistent with the true 
idea of the relation between a church and its members, what 
more ought these two complaining churches to do in the mat- 
ter? Should they continue to interchange with the Plymouth 
Church those acts of inter-communion which constitute the 
special fellowship of the Congregational Churches? This ques- 
tion was the more serious because the action complained of 
was not apologized for as exceptional and unlikely to be re- 
peated, but was defended as normal — an instance of the re- 
sponsibility to which the members of that church are held by 
their covenant; and because by a published note it had inter- 
preted its rules as relieving "all other churches from responsi- 
bility for the doctrine, order, and discipline of [that] church, 
and [that] church from all responsibility for those of other 
churches/' Advice was therefore desired by the two complain- 
ing churches on the question of withdrawing from special 
communion with the Plymouth Church. 

V. What was done by the Council. 

To give a general answer, I may say, not much, for the rea- 
son that there was little to be done. In such a case, so large 
a body must take a long time to do a little — to enunciate tiie 
case, to find out what can be done and what cannot be done. 
I have mentioned the fact that the case was before the Council 
in the form of published and official documents. These docu- 
ments were supplemented by a communication which the Ply- 
mouth Church sent in reply to an invitation from the Council, 
and which made such professions and declarations as might 
justify a hope that the exceptional and very exceptionable 
action complained of would not be repeated. The Kesult, then, 
of the Council affirms: 

1. That the complaining churches had a right to ask advice 



BBECEEBSB INTEGRITY. 151 

concerning the regularity and Christian character of what 
they had done in their dealings with the Plymouth Church. 

% That in their remonstrance they acted in the interest of 
the entire fraternity of Congregational churches, and deseived 
thanks for their "moral heroism." 

3. That their first letter made an impression in some meas- 
ure different from what was intended, and wounded the sensi- 
bilities of those to whom it was addressed, for which they had 
made in a subsequent letter all necessary explanation. 

4. That an ingenuous explanation from the Plymouth 
Church of the reasons which had moved it to rid itself of an 
offending member by an exceptional method might have 
brought the correspondence to an early and happy termina- 
tion. 

5. That the complaining churches would have done wisely 
if they had urged their request for a mutual council till rein- 
sal or evasion on the part of the Plymouth Church should have 
become unequivocal. 

6. That without obtruding upon the Plymouth Church any 
advice concerning its method of dealing with offenders, the 
principles maintained by the complaining churches in regard 
to responsibility of church members are sound. 

7. That in view of the latest utterance from the Plymouth 
Church concerning its method of discipline and its regard for 
the intercommunion of the Congregational churches, the com- 
plaining churches are advised to maintain with it the relations 
of fellowship as heretofore, in the hope that the Plymouth 
Church may satisfy them of its acceptance of those principles 
which it has been supposed to disavow. 

And now, some of you may think that what has been said 
has been dictated by suspicion of Mr. Beecher's purity. My 
theory of all these transactions and troubles proceeds on a be- 
lief in the highest Christian integrity of Mr. Beecher. I be- 
lieve that the infamous women who have started this scandal 
have no basis for it. [Applause.] If it were their testimony 
alone, it would not be worth kicking a dog for. But I doubt 
not that he has his infirmity, which is to let unprincipled men 
know too much of him. I object not to his being a friend to 
publicans and sinners. Our Lord was. But the harlot who 
washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her tres- 
ses, was a repentant harlot. So one must hedge himself in a 
little. And you, as you go out to preach, be on your guard, 
lest in your anxiety to do good to the low. you become liable to 
be charged with their sins. 



152 Sib MAGNANIMITY. 

Another part of my theory is that Mr. Beecher's magnanim- 
ity is unspeakable. I never knew a man of a larger and more 
generous mind. One ivho was*in relations to him the most in- 
timate possible, said to me> " If I ivanted to secure his highest 
love, I toould go into a church-meeeting and accuse him of 
crimes" This is his siririt. But I think he may carry it too 
far, A man whose life is a treasure to the Church Universal, 
4o his country, to his age, has no right to subject the faith in it 
to such a strain. Some one has said that Plymouth Church's 
dealing with offenders is like Dogberry's. The comparsion 
was apt: "If any one will not stand, let him go, and gather 
the guard and thank God that you are rid of such a knave." 
So of Lance, who went into the stocks and the pillory to save 
his dog from execution for stealing puddings and geese. I 
think he would have done better to let the dog die. And I 
think Mr. Beecher would have done better to have let ven- 
geance come on the heads of his slanderers. 

But he stands before his Master, and not before men. I 
hope ever to feel the fullest confidence in his character, and to 
see his influence enlarge and round out more and more. No 
one could give such a course of lectures as this last one of his here 
— which was the best — and show unconsciously such a reach of 
spiritual experience and growth, without being pure and noble. 
[Applause.] And in this feeling the Council shared. Dr. 

himself said tome as we went out of the church after 

Dr. Storrs' address, in which he paid his high tribute to Mr. 
Beecher's character and work. "That passage should be saved 
to be Mr. Beecher's funeral eulogy, for it could never be ex- 
celled. " 

This address of the Ex-Moderator of the Council was sup- 
plemented by several articles in the Independent published by 
Mr. Henry C. Bo wen, from the pen of Dr. Bacon. These ar- 
ticles severely criticised the action of Mr. Tilton and were 
written in such language as was well calculated to goad that 
gentleman into a defence of his position. 



CIIAPTER VI. 
MR. tilton's celebrated reply to dr. bacon's criticisms. 

— HIS DECLARATION THAT OWING TO THE EFFORTS MADE BY 
MR. BEECHER'S FRIENDS TO CRUSH HIM HE FELT CALLED 
UPON TO SHOW THAT HE WAS NOT THE CREATURE OF MR. 
BEECHER'S MAGNANIMITY. — THE LETTER OF BEECHER ASK- 
ING THEODORE TILTON'S FORGIVENESS. — " I HUMBLE MYSELF 
BEFORE HIM AS I WOULD BEFORE MY GOD." — THE OFFENSE 
COMMITTED AGAINST TILTON BY BEECHER, WHICH THEODORE 
FORBEARS TO NAME. — TILTON SPURNS A PROPOSITION FROM 
BEECHER'S FRIENDS TO PAY HIS EXPENSES IF HE WILL RE- 
TREAT TO EUROPE WITH HIS FAMILY. 

TP01\ the congregation who worship at Plymouth Church 
^ there had settled the conviction that the great majority of 
the distinguished divines and laymen who formed that cele- 
brated council were dissatisfied with the result of the confer- 
ence, that failed to re-open the case, and compel Mr. Beech er's 
church to force him to answer before it the charges so explicit- 
ly made, and while many hoped that — to use an expressive 
but unlicensed w r ord — that body having been " bluffed "by 
the Plymouth society, there was likely to be an end of the 
effort in behalf of an investigation. Others saw clearly that 
grave complications were likely to arise in the future. They 
argued that the declared independence of Plymouth of sister 
Congregational churches was likely to aggravate instead of 
allaying the excitement, and result in a combined movement 
on the part of the disappointed and defeated council, and its 
7* 153 



154 TILTON' S RESPONSE TO BACON. 

distinguished moderator, Dr. Bacon, to force an investigation 
by some more summary means. The publication of Dr. 
Bacon's address and essays on the subject, referred to in the 
preceding chapter, convinced these gentlemen that their sus- 
picions were well founded, and they intuitively came to the 
conclusion that these articles by the moderator were prepared 
specially to pave the way for a response from Mr. Tilton that 
would compel the church to act promptly in the premises. It 
was well known within the corporation of the church and es- 
pecially to the more confidential friends of the pastor, that, 
the celebrated gentlemen who formed that council keenly felt 
the slight given them by the course the society of Plymouth 
Church had followed on the advice of Mr. Beecher, and none 
of them were surprised when Mr. Tilton spoke in the able 
review of the case a few days later. As this document is of so 
great importance that no history of the scandal would be com- 
plete without it, it is here given in full. It is in the following 
words, as published in Mr. Tilton's Golden Age, June 24th. 

The Rev. Leonard Bacon, D. D., L. L. D., ex-Moderator of 
the Brooklyn Council : — Sir — I have carefully read your New 
Haven address concerning the late Council, and also your five 
essays on the same subject, just concluded in the Independent. 

The numerous and extraordinary misrepresentations of my 
position which these writings of yours will perpetuate to my 
injury, if not corrected, compel me to lay before you the data 
for their correction — misrepresentations which, on your part, 
are of course wholly unintentional, for you are incapable of 
doing any man a willful wrong. 

In producing to your inspection some hitherto unpublished 
papers and documents in this case, I need first to state a few 
facts in chronological sequence, sufficient to explain the docu- 
mentary evidence which follows: 

I. After I had b en for fifteen years a member of Plymouth 
Church, and had become meanwhile an intimate friend of the 
Pastor, knowledge came to me in 1870 that he had committed 
against me an offense which i forbear to name or char- 
acterize. Prompted by my self-respect, I immediately and 
forever ceased my attendance on his ministry. I informed him 
of this determination as early as January, 1871, in the pres- 
ence of a mutual friend, Mr. Francis D. Moulton. 



REASONS FOR LEA VING PL YMO UTU. 155 

The rules of Plymouth Church afforded me a choice between 
two methods of retirement : One, to ask for a formal letter of 
dismissal; the other to dismiss myself less formally by pro- 
longed absence. I chose the latter. In so doing, my chief 
desire was to avoid giving rise to curious inquiries into the 
reasons for my abandoning a Church in which I had been 
brought up from boyhood; and therefore I did not invite at- 
tention to the subject by asking for a dismissory letter, but 
adopted the alternative of silently staying aAvay, — relying on 
the rule that a prolonged absence would finally secure to me a 
dismissal involving no publicity to the case. 

Several powerful reasons prompted me to the adoption of 
this alternative, among which were the following: The Pastor 
communicated to me in writing an apology, signed by his 
name. He also appealed to me to protect him from bringing 
reproach to the cause of religion. He alleged that an ex- 
posure WOULD FORBID HIM TO REASCEND HIS PULPIT. ThlCSC, 

and other similar reasons, I had no right or disposition to dis- 
regard ; and I acted upon them with a conscious desire to see 
]\ir. Beecher protected rather than harmed. 

II. At length my absence from the Church — an absence of 
which not three members of the congregation, beside the 
Pastor, knew the cause — began to excite comment in private 
circles. 

Some of the members hinted that I had lapsed into a 
lamentable change of religious views ; whereas my views con- 
tinued to be the same as they had been for many years pre- 
vious, and, though they had long before ceased to find their 
honest expression in the formal creed which I had professed in 
my childhood at the altar of Plymouth Church, yet my 
religious faith had not changed from that early original more 
than the views of some of the most honored members and 
officers of the same Church had changed within the same 
time. 

Other persons insinuated that I had adopted unchristian 
tenets concerning marriage and divorce: whereas, touching 
marriage, I have always held, and still hold, with ever-increas- 
ing firmness, the one and only view common to all Christen- 
dom ; and touching divorce, the substance of what I held was, 
and still is, the needful abrogation of our unjust New York 
code, and the substitution of the more humane legislation of 
New England and the West. 

Other persons fancied that I had become a Spiritualist of an 



156 SURREPTITIOUS PUBLICATIONS. 

extravagant type ; whereas I have never yet seen my way clear 
to be a Spiritualist at all, — certainly not to be so much a 
Spiritualist as some of the most prominent members of Ply- 
mouth Church are known to be. 

All these suppositions, — and many others, — but never the 
right one, — became current in the Church (and still are) to 
explain my suddenly-ended membership, — the true reason for 
which has been understood always by the Pastor, but never by 
his flock. 

III. At length, after many calumnious whisperings near 
and far (since evil tales magnify as they travel), a weekly paper 
in New York, in November, 1872, published a wicked and 
horrible scandal, — a publication which some persons in the 
Church ignorantly attributed in its origin and animus to me ; 
whereas I had previously spent many months of constant 

AND UNREMITTING ENDEAVOR TO SUPPRESS IT, — ail endeavor 

in which, with an earnest motive, but a foolish judgment, I 
made many ill-directed sacrifices of my reputation, position, 
money, and fair prospects in life ; for all which losses of things 
precious, since mine alone was the folly, let mine alone be the 
blame. 

IV. In May, 1873, occurred the surreptitious publication 
of a tripartite agreement signed by H. C. Bowen, H. W. 
Beecher, and myself, — an agreement which, so far as I was 
concerned, had for its object to pledge me to silence against 
using or circulating charges which Mr. Bowen had made 
against Mr. Beecher. This covenant, as originally written, 
would have bound me never to speak, not only of Mr. Bowen's, 
but also of my own personal grievances against Mr. Beecher. 
I refused to sign the original paper. My position in the 
amended paper was this : Mr. Bowen had made grave charges 
against Mr. Beecher. These charges Mr. Bowen had been 
induced to recall in writing. I cheerfully agreed never to 
circulate the charges which Mr. Bowen had recalled. 

V. In August, 1873, Mr. William F. West, a member of 
Plymouth Church, hitherto a stranger to me, came to my 
residence, accompanied (at his request) by my friend, Mr. 
F. B. Carpenter, and told me that, when the summer-vacation 
was over he (Mr. W.) meant to cite me before the Church on 
the charge of circulating scandals against the Pastor, — de- 
claring, in Mr. C.'s presence, that Mr. Beecher had acted as if 
the reported scandalous tales were true rather than false, and 
urging that I owed it to myself and the truth to go forward 



INDIRECT AND INSINCERE METHOD. 15 7 

and become a willing witness in an investigation. I perempto- 
rily declined to join Mr. West in his proposed investigation, 
anil declared that, as I had not been a member of Plymouth 
Chnrch for several years, I could not be induced to return to 
tha^ Church for any purpose whatever, least of all for so dis- 
tasteful a purpose as to participate in a scandal. Mr. West 
had meanwhile discovered that my name still remained on the 
Church-roll ; from which circumstance he determined to 
assume that I was still a member, and to force me to trial. 
Accordingly, a few weeks later, he brought forward charges 
which were nominally against myself, but really against the 
Pastor, — charges which, if I may characterize them by the 
recently published language of the present Clerk of Plymouth 
Church, were "an indirect and insincere method of investi- 
gating one man under the false pretense of investigating an- 
other." 

Some leading members, including especially the Pastor, 
desired my cooperation in defeating Mr. West, and I cheerfully 
gave it. To this end, I wrote — with their pre-knowledge and 
at their urgent desire — -a letter declining to accept a copy of 
the charges addressed to me as a member, on the ground that 
I had, four years previously, ceased my connection with the 
Church. For this letter, I received, on the next day after 
sending it, the pastor's prompt and hearty thanks. An under- 
standing w T as then had between Mr. Beecher and myself, in an 
interview at the residence of Mr. Moulton, that Mr. West's 
indictment against me was to be disposed of in the following 
way, namely: by a simple resolution to the effect that, where.js 
I had four years previously, terminated my membership; and 
whereas by inadvertence my name still remained on the roll: 
therefore, resolved that the roll be amended in accordance with 
the fact. This w r as to put Mr. West's case quietly out of court 
without bringing up the scandal. To my surprise mid indig- 
nation, I learned on the morning of October 31st, 1873, that 
the report which was to be presented at the Church-meeting 
to be held on that evening would not be in the simple 1 form 
already indicated, but would declare that, whereas I had been 
charged with slandering the Pastor; and whereas I had been 
cited before the Church to meet the charge; and whereas I 
had pleaded non-membership as an excuse for not appearing 
for trial; therefore resolved, that I should be dropped, etc. 

This gross imputation, thus foreshadowed to me, led me to 
appear in person at the Church on that evening, there to await 



158 BEECHER NO CHARGE TO MAKE. 

the reading of the forthcoming report. This report, when it 
came to be read, brought me the following novel intelligence, 
namely: "Whereas a copy of the charges was put into the 
hands of the said Tilton on the 17th of October, and a request 
made of him that lie should answer the same by the 23d of 
October," etc. 

I do not know to this day whose hand it was that drew the 
above report, and therefore I am happily saved an offensive 
personality when I say that the statement which I have here 
quoted is diametrically the opposite of the truth; for, instead 
of my having been requested to answer the charges, I had been 
requested not to answer them. 

After the public reading of the above report, I arose in the 
meeting, and said, in Mr. Beecher's presence, that, if I had 
slandered him, I would answer for it to his face; to which he 
replied, in an equally public manner, that he had no charge 

WHATEVER TO MAKE AGAINST ME. 

IV. Next, growing out of the Church's singular proceed- 
ings in the case, came the Congregational Council of which 
you were Moderator. 

The above facts and events — which I have mentioned as 
briefly as possible, omitting their details — will serve as a suffi- 
cient ground-work whereon to base the correction of the unjust 
and injurious statements which you have unwittingly given 
of my participation and responsibility in the case. With the 
Congregational theories and usages which you have so ably 
discussed, I have no concern; you are probably right about 
them. But, as to all the essential facts growing out of my 
relationship to Plymouth Church, you have been wholly misin- 
formed, as you will see by the following proofs. 

I. You say that I retired from the Church, giving no 
announcement of my so doing to any proper officer;, in other 
words, that I stole out secretly, letting no one in authority 
know of my purpose. Your language concerning me is as 
follows: 

His position was that he had terminated his membership four years 
previously, — not by requesting the Church (as by its rules it might have 
done) to drop his name from its roll etc. 

You then ask: 

Is this the beautiful non-stringency of the covenant which connects the 
members of that Church with the body, and with eacli other? What sort 
of covenant is that which can be dissolved at any moment, not by mutual 



SHEARMAN'S VIEWS. 159 

consent, nor by either party giving notice to the other, but by a silent 
volition in the mind of either? 

The above is a thorough mistatement of the manner in which 
I left Plymouth Church. 

On the very first occasion of my meeting the chief officer of 
the Church after my retirement, I gave notice to him of that 
retirement. At a late period, I repeated this notice to other 
officers of that body. In evidence of this fact, I adduce the 
following extract from a recent card by Mr. Thomas G. Shear- 
man, Clerk of Plymouth Church, published in the Independ- 
ent of June 18th, 1871. He says: 

Long before any charges were preferred against him, Mr. Tilton dis- 
tinctly informed the Clerk of the Church, and various other officers and 
members (myself included), that he hadS withdrawn^ and that his name 
ought to be taken off the roll. 

II. You say that I have either "a malicious heart or a crazy 
brain." I know the fountain-head of this opinion. While 
the Council was in session in Brooklyn, the following startling 
paragraph appeared in the Brooklyn "Union of Saturday, March 
28th, 1874: 

At the close of the services a Union reporter approached Mr. Beecher 
for the purpose of getting his views as to the Council, but he declined to 
be interviewed. Mr. Shearman, the Clerk, of the Church, however, was 
communicative. He said he had received no intimation, as yet, what 
course the Council would pursue. In regard to the scandal on Mr. 
Beecher he said, so far as Tilton was concerned, he (Tilton) was out of 
his mind, off his balance, and did not act reasonsbly. As for Mrs. Tilton, 
she had occasioned the whole trouble while in a half-crazed condition, 
she had mediumistic fits, and while under the strange power that possessed 
her often spoke of the most incredible things, declared things possible that 
were impossible, and, among the rest, had slandered Mr. Beecher. Mr. 
Tilton himself had acknowledged that all the other things she had told him 
in her mediumistic trance were false and impossible ; then why, asked Mr. 
Shearman, should the scandal on Mr. Beecher be the only truth in her 
crazy words? 

My attention was not called to the above paragraph until after 
the Council had adjourned and its members had gone to their 
homes. At first I was not willing to believe that the Clerk of 
Plymouth Church — the same officer whose name had been offi- 
cially signed to all the documents which the Church had just 
been sending to the Council — could have been guilty of so great 



160 SHEARMAN'S APOLOG Y. 

an outrage against truth and decency as the above paragraph 
contained — particularly against a lady whose devout religious 
faith and life are at the farthest possible remove from Spiritu- 
alism or fanaticism of any kind. Accordingly I procured the 
following sworn statement by the reporter, certifying to the 
accuracy of his report: 

Kings County, ss. 

Edwin F. Denyse, reporter of the Brooklyn Union, being duly sworn, 
deposed as follows : 

At the close of the Friday evening meeting in Plymouth Church, March 
27th, 1874, I, in company with another member of the press, requested 
Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, Clerk of the Church, to communicate to us for 
publication any facts, or comments, or opinions, which he might wish to 
make concerning the Congregational Council then in session ; whereupon 
Mr. Shearman stated in our hearing, and for the purpose for which we 
asked him to do so, the allegations contained in the previous paragraph. 
And I do swear that this paragraph is a correct and moderate report of 
Mr. Shearman's statement, both in letter and spirit. And I further testify, 
that I solicited a^ a reporter the above statement from Mr. Shearman 
because he was the Clerk of the Church, whose name had been affixed in 
that capacity to the documents that Plymouth Church had sent to the 
Council, and because an opinion from such a high officer would have an 
official authenticity and importance. Edwin E. Denyse. 

Sworn to before me this 1st day of April, 1874. 

ERANK CROOKE, Justice of the Peace. 

Shortly after the appearance of Mr. Shearman's reported in- 
terview in the Union, that gentleman sent to me, through Mr. 
R D. Monlton, a letter, the substance of which was that he 
(Mr. S.) had referred in the above conversation, not tome 
or my family, but to other persons. This letter I declined to 
receive, and returned it to the writer, with a demand upon 
him to retract his untrue and unjust statements. Further- 
more, I required,as a condition of my accepting from Mr. 
Shearman any apology at all, that this apology should be pre- 
sented to me in writing in the presence of the Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher. This was promptly done. At Mr. Moulton's 
house, in Mr. Beecher's presence. Mr. Shearman's apologetic 
letter was as follows: 

Brooklyn, April 2, 1874. 

Dear Sir : — Having seen a paragraph in the Brooklyn Union of Saturday 
last, containing a report of a statement alleged to have been made by me 



TILTON'S LETTER TO THE CHURCH. 101 

concerning 1 your family and yourself, I desire to assure you that this report 
is seriously incorrect, and that I have never authorized such a statement. 

It is unnecessary to repeat here what I have actually said upon these 
subjects, because I am now satisfied that what I did say was erroneous, 
and that the rumors to which I gave some credit were without foundation. 

I deeply regret having been misled into an act of unintentional injustice, 
and am glad to take the earliest occasion to rectify it. I beg, therefoi e to 
withdraw all that I said upon the occasion referred to as incorrect (although 
then believed by me), and to repudiate entirely the statement imputed to 
me as untrue and unjust to all parties concerned. 

T. G. Shearman. 

Theodore Tilton, Esq. ' 

The above-named calumny which Mr. T. G. Shearman thus 
retracted is but one of several falsehoods against my wife and 
myself which have been fostered by interested parties to ex- 
plain the action of Plymouth Church — falsehoods which, in 
some instances, have been corrected in the same way, and 
which, in others, still await to be corrected, either in this way, 
or a court of justice. 

III. You ask, '-When did Mr. Tilton cease to be responsible 
to the Plymouth Church ? " I answer that I first ceased my 
responsibility to that church when I terminated my member- 
ship, four years ago. I afterwards voluntarily renewed my re- 
sponsibility to the church on the evening of October 31st, 1873, 
by appearing in person at one of its public meetings, and of- 
fering to answer then and there, in the pastor's presence, the 
charge that I had slandered him. Less than two months ago, 
I still further renewed my responsibility to Plymouth Church, 
as will appear by the following correspondence: 

Brooklyn, May, 4 1874. 
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Paslor of Plymouth Church; the Rev, S. 
B. Halliday, Associate Paslor; and Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, Clerk: 
Gentlemen: — I address, through you, to the Church of which you 
are officers, the following statement, which you are at liberty to communi- 
cate to the church through the Examining Committee, or in any other 
mode, private or public 

The Rev. Leonard Bacon D. J)., L. L. D., Moderator of the recent 
Congregational Council, has seen fit since the adjournment of that body, 
to proclaim, publish and reiterate, with signal emphasis, and with the 
weight of something like official authority, a grave declaration which I 
here quote, namely : 



162 TILTON'S PROPOSITION. 

"It was for the Plymouth Church," he says, "to vindicate its Pastor 
against a damaging imputation from one of its members. But with great 
alacrity— the Pastor himself consenting — it threw away the opportunity of 
vindication."* * * " That act," he continued, " in which the Plymouth 
Church threw away the opportunity of vindicating its Pastor, was what 
gave occasion for remonstrance from neighboring Churches." * * * 
"There are many," he says also, " not only in Brooklyn, but elsewhere, 
who felt that the Church had not fairly met the question, and by evading 
the issue had thrown away the opportunity to vindicate its Pastor." 

The Moderator's declaration is thus made three times over, that the 
Plymouth Church, in dealing with my case, threw away its opportunity of 
vindicating the Pastor. 

This declaration, so emphatically repeated by the chief mouth-piece of the 
Council, and put forth by him apparently as an exposition of the Council's 
views, compels me, as the third party to the controversy, to choose between 
two alternatives. 

One of these is to remain contentedly in the dishonorable position of a 
man who denies to his former Pastor an opportunity for vindication of that 
Pastor's character, — an offense the more heinous because an unsullied 
character and reputation are requisites to his sacred office. 

The other alternative is for me to restore to his Church their lost oppor- 
tunity for his vindication by presenting myself voluntarily for the same 
trial to which the Church would have power to summon me if I were a 
member, — a suggestion which (judging from my past experience) will sub- 
ject mo afresh to the unjust imputation of reviving a scandal for the sup- 
pr. ssi n of which I have made more sacrifices than all other persons. 

Between these two alternatives, — which are all that the Moderator leaves 
to me, and which are both equally repugnant to my feelings, — duty requires 
me to choose the second. 

I, therefore, give you notice that, if the Pastor, or the Examining Com- 
mittee, or the Church as a body, desire to repossess the opportunity which 
the Moderator laments that you have thrown away, I hereby restore to you 
this lost opportunity as freely as if you had never parted with it. 

I authorize you (if such be your pleasure) to cite me at any time 
within the next thirty days to appear at the bar of Plymouth Church for 
trial on the charge heretofore made against me, namely : that of circulat- 
ing and promoting scandals derogatory to the Christian integrity of the 
Pastor, and injurious to the reputation of the Church. 

My only stipulation concerning the trial is, that it shall not be held with 
closed doors, nor in the absence of the Pastor. 

I regret keenly that the Moderator has imposed upon me the necessity 
for making this communication, but nothing but necessity would extort it. 



PL YMO UTH BACKS BO WN. 103 

The practical good which I seek to achieve hy this proposition is, that, 
whether accepted or declined, it will in either case, effectually put an end 
forever to the Moderator's grave charge that Plymouth Church lias been 
deprived through me of an opportunity to vindicate its Pastor, or that its 
Pastor has been by any act of mine deprived of an opportunity to vindicate 
himself. Truly yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 

To the above communication I received the following reply 
from the Clerk of the Church: 

Brooklyn May 18th, 1874. 

Dear Sik: — Your note of the 4th inst., inclosing a letter addressed to 
Mr. Beecher, Mr. Ilalliday and myself, was duly received. 

This letter has been received by Mr. Halliday, with whose concurrence 
it has been submitted to the Examining Committee : and we all deem its 
contents to present a question which should be decided by that Committee, 
and which should not be submitted to the Pastor of the Church, to whom, 
therefore, the letter has not been shown, though he has been advised of its 
substance. 

Having consulted the members of the committee, I am informed by them 
that they see no reason for accepting your proposition, or even for laying 
it before the Church. 

Whatever view may be taken of the case by others, the Examining 
Committee and the Church have seen no necessity for vindicating any 
member of the Church from charges which no one has made, and the 
Church has never, in the twenty-seven years of its history, adopted such 
a course. No one can, therefore, hold you responsible for the loss of an 
opportunity to the Church to do that which it never yet has done, and 
probably never will do. 

We do not understand your letter as implying that you have any charge 
to make, but to the contrary. If the Committee had so understood it, they 
would have readily entertained and fully investigated it. 

It is proper to add that your name was dropped from the roll, not simply 
because of the statements made by you after charges had been preferred 
against you, but because months, if not years, before any charges were 
made, you distinctly stated to various officers and members of the Church 
that you had permanently abandoned your connection with it, thus bringing 
yourself expressly within the terms of our rule upon this subject. 

Yours truly 

Thomas G. Shearman. 

Mr. Theodore Tilton. 



1G4 SHEARMAN'S NOTE OFFICIAL. 

As the above communication by Mr. Shearman seemed to 
bear no official, but only a private signature, 1 addressed to 
him the following communication: 

174 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, ) 
May 23d, 1874. 5 

Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, Clerk of Plymouth Church— Sir :— My 
^recent communication, addressed to the Pastor, Associate Pastor, and the 
Clerk of Plymouth Church, is acknowledged by you in a note which you 
seem to have signed merely as a private individual, and not as an officer of 
the Church. 

I call your attention to the fact that I did not address you in your 
private capacity, but solely as the Clerk of Plymouth Church. 

1 therefore respectfully request to be informed by you definitely in 
writing, whether or not I am at liberty to regard your letter an official 
reply to mine. Truly yours, 

Theodork Tilton. 
Mr. Shearman's reply was as follows: 

81 Hicks Stree,t, Brooklyn, May 29, 1874. 

Bear Sir : — In reply to your inquiry whether my letter of the 18th inst. 
was an official answer to yours of the 4th inst., I beg to say that I did not 
feel at liberty, without the express authority of the Church itself, to sign 
that letter as its Clerk. 

In so far as the letter stated that your proposition of May 4th, was 
declined, it was official : since, as Clerk of the Church, I declined then, 
and decline now, to lay the proposals before the Church itself, holding 
myself responsible to the Church for so doing. 

The remainder of the letter of 18th inst. must be regarded as my individ- 
ual statement of what I believe to be the unanimous opinion of the officers 
of the Church. Your obedient servant, 

Thomas G. Shearman. 

Mr. Theodore Tilton. 

It will thus be seen that Mr. Shearman, in answer to my 
inquiry, characterizes his previous letter to me as partly official 
and partly unofficial, — though how he could originally have 
expected me to draw the dividing line between its two parts 
without the subsequent explanation, I am at a loss to under- 
stand. But the official portion of his letter (now that it has 
been pointed out to me) is sufficient to answer your query: 
"When did Mr. Tilton cease to be responsible to the Plymouth 
Church?" I respectfully submit that, setting aside all previous 



! 



UNFAIRNESS OF THE " CHRISTIAN UNION" 165 

cavils and technicalities concerning the Chnrch-roll, I may be 
fairly said to have ceased my responsibility to Plymouth 
Church when the Clerk of that Church officially informed me 
that my voluntary offer to return and be tried was officially 
declined. 

IV. In your five essays, you were led, through ignorance of 
the facts, to make several other erroneous and injurious state- 
ments concerning my case; but the corrections and explana- 
tions which I have already given w r ill of themselves correct the 
others. 

It now remains for me to give you some reasons why I have 
been prompted, after years of reticence, to lay before you the 
grave matters contained in this communication. Nothing 
could induce me to make my present use of the foregoing 
facts, except the conviction which the events of the last year, 
and particularly the last half-year, have forced upon my mind, 
that Mr. Beecher, or his legal and other agents, acting in his 
interest and by his consent, have shown themselves willing to 
sacrifice my good name for the maintenance of his. I have 
come slowly to this judgment. — more slowly than my personal 
friends have done; but that I am not mistaken in it, you shall 
see by a few illustrative instances: 

I. I have already shown you bow the Church, at a public 
meeting, on Friday evening, October 31st, 1873, by an official 
document which was published the next morning in every 
leading journal in New York, gave the public falsely to under- 
stand that I had been cited to answer charges, when 1 had 
really been requested not to answer them — a piece of ecclesias- 
tical misrepresentation which was the more grievous to me be- 
cause it was subsequently accepted by the Council as authentic, 
and because it is still widely believed by the public. 

II. Mr. Beecher's journal, the Christian Union, published 
this official falsehood to a wide circle of readers, and took no 
notice of the correction which I addressed at the time in a 
brief note to the Council. Let me ask you to weigh the pecu- 
liar gravity of this omission by that journal. My case, as pre- 
sented to the Council by the two protesting Clur ches, was 
based by them, not on any private or accurate knowledge of 
facts, but solely on the published misstatements of those facts 
by Plymouth Church. I was described by the two Churches 
to the Council as follows: 

Specific charges of grossly un-Christian conduct are presented against 
him by a brother in the Church, to which charges he declines to answer, 
etc. 



106 BEECHES? S INSPIRED MESSAGE. 

You will remember that I promptly addressed to you a re- 
ply to the above, in which I used the following explicit words: 

Gentlemen of the Council, every man among you knows I did not decline 
to answer. 

You, as Moderator of the Council, courteously gave me the 
ecclesiastical reasons why my letters could not be officially laid 
^before that body; but can you give me any honorable reason 
why my defense should not have been published in the Chris- 
tian Union! If every other American journal should be de- 
stroyed, and only the files of the Christian Union should re- 
main, that journal's report of my case would represent me as a 
culprit, first who had slandered a clergyman; next, who 
had been summoned before the Church to answer for this cal- 
umniation; next, who had evaded this summons by resorting 
to the safe shelter of non-membership ; and last, who, on ac- 
count of his moral poltroonery, had been dropped from the 
roll. Such is the record which Mr. Beecher's journal contains 
of my case up to date. 

III. During the Council, and when there seemed a proba- 
bility that Plymouth Church would receive condemnation and 
be disfellowshiped by the neighboring Churches, Mr. Beecher 
inspired a message from his Church to the Council, closing 
with these words: 

We hold that it is our right and may be our duty, to avoid the evils 
incident to a public explanation or a public trial, and that such an exercise 
of our discretion furnishes no good ground for the interference of other 
Churches, provided we neither retain within our fellowship nor dismiss 
by letter, as in regular standing, persons who bring open dishonor on the 
Christian name. 

This adroit insinuation against me is what you, as Modera- 
tor of the Council, know to have been the turning point in 
the fortunes of Plymouth Church before that tribunal. The 
Council's verdict borrows almost these identical words. It 
says : " The accused person has not been retained in the Church, 
nor commended to any other Church." You, too, quote these 
words, — borrowed thus doubly from the Church's plea and 
from the Council's verdict, — and you then logically say: 
" Therefore, the abnormal method in which the charges against 
him [me] were disposed of was overlooked." In other words, 
the Council, on reading the above excusatory petition sent up 
to it by Plymouth Church, found in it the one and only 



DISHONOR ON THE CHRISTIAN NAME. 107 

ground for retaining that Church within the Congregation fel- 
lowship ; and this one and only ground was because Mr. 
Bcccher's final appeal to the Council represented me as a per- 
son who had neither been retained in his Church, nor been 
recommenced to any other, but was dropped from the roll for 
bringing " dishonor on the Christian name/' This document 
— constituting Plymouth Church's ungenerous defense before 
the Council — was accepted by you in good faith, and has since 
led you to point against me the following cruel words: 

The Plymouth Church [you say] made it known that they were no longer 
responsible for the dishonor which lie has brought, or may bring, on the 
name of Christ. They dropped him from the roll of the Church. In one 
word, they excommunicated him, for such a dropping from the roll was 
excommunication from the Church. 

You could never have uttered the preceding injurious words 
against me, had not Mr. Beecher and his Church-Agents given 
you the materials for so doing by ingeniously putting before 
the Council a document which you, as Moderator, interpreted 
as being only another way of Plymouth Church's saying that 
I had brought dishonor on the Christian name, and had there- 
fore been excommunicated. 

Do not misunderstand me. I will not say that, in my un- 
successful management of this unhappy scandal, I have 
broughtno "dishonor on the Christian name" — the one which, 
of all others, I most seek to honor. With infinite sorrow I 
look back through the last few years, and sec instances in 
which, by the fatality of my false position, I have brought pe- 
culiar "dishonor on the Christian name " — all of which I free- 
ly acknowledge and hope yet to repair. But I solemnly aver 
— and no man shall gainsay me — that the reason why Ply- 
mouth Church avoided an investigation into the scandal with 
which 1 was charged was not because /, but another man, had 
"brought dishonor on the Christian name." And yet this 
other person, a clergyman, permitted his Church to brand me 
before the Council with an accusation which, had I been in his 
place and he in mine, I would have voluntarily borne for my- 
hclf instead of casting on another. 

111. I will adduce a further instance by a quotation from a 
letter which I had occasion to address to Mr. Beecher, dated 
May 1st, l^A: 

Henry Ward Beecher:— Sir- Mr. F. B. Carpenter mentions to me your 
saying to him that, under certain conditions, involving certain disavowals 



108 OFFER TO SEND IIIM ABROAD. 

by me, a sum of money would or could be raised to send me, with my 
family, to Europe for a term of years. 

The occasion compels me to state explicitly that, so long as life and self- 
respect continue to exist together in my breast, I shall be debarred from 
receiving either directly or indirectly any pecuniary or other favor at 
your hands. 

The reason for this feeling on my part you know so well that I will spare 
you the statement of it. Yours truly, 

Theodore Tilton. 

IV. Take another instance. You will perceive that in Mr. 
Shearman's letter, given above — the letter officially declining 
my offer to return to the Church to be tried, — he says, under 
date May 18th, 1874 : 

Your note of the 4th inst., inclosing a letter addressed to Mr. Beecher, 
Mr. Halliday, and myself, was duly received. This letter has been read 
by Mr. Halliday with whose concurrence it has been submitted to the 
Examining Committee. 

And yet, a month and a half after Mr. Halliday saw this let- 
ter, and a month after Mr. Shearman had official!}' replied to 
it, the Brooklyn Union, of June 19th, contained the following 
singular statement by a reporter who visited Mr. Halliday : 

In an extract [says the Union] from a letter written to the Chicago 
Tribune, it stated that Mr Tilton had addressed a note to the " Trustees 
of Plymouth Church." The Tribune's correspondent declares that Mr. 
Tilton "not only expresses his willingness, but desires, to answer any 
summons as a witness during the next thirty days." A Union reporter 
(Mr. Tilton not being accessible) called on the Rev. Mr. Halliday to-day, 
and, upon presenting the extract to him, was assured that the person who 
corresponded with the Chicago Tribune must have been misinformed. 
The very fact of his stating that the letter was addressed "to the Trustees 
of the Church," he said, " was an absurdity." The Trustees only attended 
to temporalities of the Church. If Mr. Tilton had written such a letter — 
of which, however, he had no knowledge, it would have either been addressed 
to the Church, to its Pastor, or to some member or members. At the last 
Friday evening meeting no such letter had been presented for consideration, 
and he was certain none had since been received, although he must say he 
had been absent in Massachusetts about a week. He added that he had 
reason for believing that Mr. Tilton felt u a little sore about what the Rev. 
Mr. Bacon had said>of him. But whether he would take to writing about 
it, he couldn't say." 



FACILITY GIVEN FOB INVESTIGATION. 16U 

And yet Mr. Halliday, according to Mr. Shearman's testi- 
monj', above given, had read ray letter forty days before thus 
denying that he had ever seen or heard of it. 

A similar statement to the above appeared in the Brooktyn 
Eagle at the same time (June 20th), as follows : 

The Trustees of Plymouth Church deny that Theodore Tilton has addressed 
a letter to them offering himself as a witness, and expressing a desire to 
answer certain charges against Mr. Beecher, during the next thirty days. 
They say that the whole story is false from beginning to end. 

The above are recent specimens — not solitary or unique — of 
the manner in which Mr. Beecher's agents have not hesitated 
to use the Brooklyn press, on numerous occasions, to misrepre- 
sent and pervert my case to the community in which I reside, 
and to the public at large. 

V. Furthermore, I regret to point 3-011 to the evidence that 
Plymouth Church, or rather the attorney "who now acts as its 
Clerk, is attempting to make up a false but plausible record 
concerning this case, for the purpose of appealing to it in future 
to my disadvantage. It was to this end that Mr. Shearman 
ingeniously incorporated in his letter to me, dated May 18th, 
1874, the following words : 

We do not understand your letter as implying that you have any charges 
to make, but the contrary. If the Committee had so understood it, they 
would have readily entertained and fully investigated them. 

The manifest object of the above record is to enable the 
Church to say, a year or five years hence, that, if I ever had 
any charges to make against Mr. Beecher, the Church had long 
ago given me an abundant opportunity to make them. Mr. 
Shearman is still more bold in his communication to the Inde- 
pendent, dated June 18th, 1874. He therein says of the 
Church : 

Its officers have in the proper way, without parade given every facility 
for investigation that could reasonably be desired,, even by the most cap- 
tious critics. 

The above statement by Mr. Shearman is made in a letter 
which was put forth by him ostensibly in my interest, and 
which I am already accused of having inspired. This leads me 
to disavow the declaration which I have last quoted, as insin- 
cere and at variance with the truth. 

VI. Not to multiply instances needlessly, there is one other 
to which my self-respect compels me to allude with painful 

8 



170 LET THE DOG DIE. 

explicitness. In your New Haven speech, you characterized 
Mr. Beecher as the most magnanimous of men, and in the con- 
text referred to me as a knave and a dog. You left the public 
to infer that I had become, in some despicable way, the crea- 
ture of Mr. Beecher's magnanimity. Earl} r in April last, I 
called Mr. Beecher's attention to the offensiveness and injurious- 
.ness of your statement, and informed him that I should insist 
on its correction, either by him or me. In order to provide an 
eas}' way for him to correct it, involving no humiliation to his 
feelings, I addressed to you the following letter : 

Brooklyn, April 3d, 1874. 

The Rev. Leonard Bacon, D. D. — My dear Sir: — I have just been 
reading the Tribune's report of your Yale speech on the Brooklyn Council, 
in which occurs the following paragraph : 

" Another part of my theory is, that Mr. Beecher's magnanimity is 
unspeakable. I never knew a man of larger and more generous mind. 
One who was in relations to him the most intimate possible said to me. 
' If I wanted to secure his highest love, I would go into a church-meeting 
and accuse him of crimes.' This is his spirit. But I think he may carry 
it too far. A man whose life is a treasure to the Church Universal, to his 
country, to his age, has no right to subject the faith in it to such a strain. 
Some one has said that Plymouth Church's dealings with offenders is like 
Dogberry's. The comparison was apt : ' If any one will not stand, let 
him go and gather the guard and thank God that you are rid of such a 
knave.' So of Lance, who went into the stocks and the pillory to save 
his dog from execution for stealing puddings and geese. I think he would 
have done better to let the dog die. And I think Mr. Beecher would have 
done better to have let vengeance come on the heads of his slanderers.*' 
* * * * ** * # **** 

Setting aside the satire and mirth, if there be any criticism directed tow- 
ard me in these words of sobriety and earnestness, then I beg you to do 
me the following act of justice : 

Please forward to Mr. Beecher the letter which I am now writing, and 
ask him to inform you, on his word of honor, whether I have been his 
slanderer; whether I have spoken against him falsely; whether I have 
evaded my just responsibility to Plymouth Church ; whether I have treated 
him other than with the highest possible fairness ; and whether he has not 
acknowledged to me in large and ample terms, that my course towards him 
in this sorrowful business has been marked by the magnanimity which you 
apparently intimate has characterized his towards me. 

If you will write to Mr. Beecher as I have indicated, I will thank you 



BACON NOT BEECUERS CONBUDANT. 171 

for a line as to the words or substance of his reply. With great respect I 
am truly yours, 

THEODORK TlLTON. 

In reply to the above letter, you sent me the following : 

New Haven, April 10th, 1874. 
Theodore Tilton, Esq. — Dear Sir :— Not being in Mr. Beecher's confi- 
dence, I have doubted what I ought to do with your letter written a week 
ago. I was not — and am not — willing to demand of him that he shall 
admit me to his confidence in a matter on which he chooses to be reticent. 
But, as the letter seems to have been written for him quite as much as for 
me, I have now sent it to him, without asking or expecting any reply. 
************ 

With the best wishes for your welfare, I am yours truly, 

Leonard Bacon. 

It is now between two or three months since I received from 
j t ou the foregoing letter ; and, as I have not heard that Mr. 
Beecher has made a reply, either to yon or to me, I am at last 
forced to the disagreeable necessit}- of borrowing a reply in his 
own words, as follows : 

Brooklyn, Jan. 1, 1871. 
I ask Theodore Tilton's forgiveness, and humble myself before him as I 
do before my God. He would have been a better man in my circumstances 
than I have been. I can ask nothing except that he will remember all the 
other breasts that would ache. I will not plead for myself. I even wish 
that I were dead. 

* * * * * ******* 

II. W. Beechkr. 

The above brief extract from Mr. Beecher's own testimony 
will be sufficient, without adducing the remainder of the docu- 
ment, to show that I have just ground to resist the imputation 
that 1 am the creature of his magnanimity. 

In conclusion, the common impression that I have circulated 
and promoted scandals against Mr. Beecher is not true. I 
doubt if any other man in Brooklyn, during the whole extent 
of the last four years, has spoken to so few persons on this 
subject as 1 have done. A mere handful of my intimate friends 
— who had a right to understand the case — are the only persons 
to whom 1 have ever communicated the facts. To all other 
persons I have been dumb, — resisting all questions, and refusing 
all explanations. 

If the public have heretofore considered my silence as inex- 



172 TILTON'S BOW TO BACON. 

plicable, let my sufficient motive be now seen in the just for- 
bearance which I felt morally bound to show to a man who 
had sent me a written and absolute apology. 

But my duty to continue this forbearance ceased when the 
spirit of that apology was violated to my injury by its author 
or his agents. These violations have been multitudinous al- 
ready, and they threaten to multiply in the future — forcing me 
to protect myself against them in advance — particularly against 
the cunning devices of the Clerk of the Church, who, acting 
as an attorney, appears to be conducting this business against 
me as if it were a case at law. 

Had the fair spirit which I had a right to expect from Ply- 
mouth Church — at least for its Pastor's sake — been shown 
toward me, I would have continued to rest in silence on Mr. 
Beecher's apology, and never during the remainder of my life 
would I have permitted any public word of mine to allude to 
the offense or the offender. 

But the injurious measure which the author of this apology 
has since permitted his Church to take against me, without 
protest on his part — measures leading to the misrepresentation 
of my case and character by the Church to the Council, and by 
the Council to the general public— involving gross injuries to 
me, which have been greatly aggravated by your writings — all 
these indictments, conjoining to one end, have put me before 
my countrymen in the character of a base and bad man — a 
character which, I trust, is foreign to my nature and life. 
Under the accumulating weight of this odium — unjustly be- 
stowed on me— neither patience nor charity can demand that I 
keep silent. 

In your capacity as ex-Moderator of the Council, and as its 
chief expositor, you have labeled the theme of your animadver- 
sions, "the celebrated case of Theodore Tilton." You have 
declared that " the transaction, with all its consequences, be- 
long to history, and is in every way a legitimate subject of 
public criticism." If, therefore, your estimate of the historic 
importance of the case is true (though I hope it is not), I now 
finally appeal to you as its chief historian, not to represent me 
as playing an unmanly or dishonorable part in a case in which, 
so far as I can yet see, I have failed in no duty save to myself. 
Truly yours, Theodore Tilton 




DOCT. LEONARD BACON. 



CHAPTER VII. 

A SCATHING REVIEW OF TILTON, BEECIIER AND WOODHTTLl/s PER- 
NICIOUS DOCTRINES FROM THE PEN OF PROFESSOR V. B. DENSLOW. 
THE " RECORD OF THESE THREE REFORMERS THE OUTCROP- 
PINGS OF UNCLEANLINESS." TILTON's BIOGRAPHY OF " THAT 

UNBLUSHING APOSTLE OF PROSTITUTION " SEVERELY CRITICISED. 

TILTON'S AMBITION AND HIS MARTYRDOM. HIS ANALYZATION 

OF BEECHER'S CHARACTER. HENRY WARD IS A VOLUPTUARY 

AND VERY SELFISH. TILTON BEING A " FREE LOVER " COULD 

VERY PROPERLY ACCEPT AN APOLOGY FROM BEECHER FOR IN- 
VADING HIS HOME, INSTEAD OF RESORTING TO THE COWHIDE OR 
PISTOL. THE INNER-LIFE OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 

npHE publication of Tilton's response to the Moderator, had 
the effect that both he and the members of the Council 
who had been so politely invited by Plymouth Church to " mind 
their own business," anticipated ; it called attention to the sub- 
ject that Beecher's friends had labored so long to ignore and 
stifle, and set not only the religious communities of New York 
and Brooklyn, where Mr. Beecher was so well and universally 
esteemed for his great talents, and bold and eloquent utterances, 
but the whole country, canvassing the pastor's guilt or inno- 
cence. The secular and religious journals alike published it, 
and commented thereon in such an unmistakable tone, that 
from' the Kennebec to the Pacific the universal cry came up and 
was echoed and re-echoed, u Mr. Beecher must now speak! 
He cannot : he dare not be silent !" That letter : " / humble my- 
self before Theodore Tilton" etc., in the judgment of the entire 

173 



174 DENSLO WS REVIEW. 

nation demanded a prompt explanation. With Plymouth 
Church congregation the article in the Golden Age created 
intense alarm. Had a sixty-four pound shell dropped and ex- 
ploded in the midst of one of Mr. Beecher's eloquent discourses 
no greater consternation could have been created. 

And when some of the ablest writers of the country placed 
i^heir opinions on paper their alarm was intensified an hundred 
fold. Among the reviews of the case that attracted general 
attention was the following supplied to the Northwestern Chris- 
tian Advocate by Professor V. B. Denslow : 

" Those three persons," he says, referring to Tilton, Beecher 
and Woodhull, " whose names are now associated in the crown- 
ing scandal of the age, by a coincidence more logical than 
many will admit, are all, or have been, presidents of national 
women's rights associations. They have all entertained and 
advocated certain advanced notions of women's freedom, very 
like those advanced nearly a century ago by Mary Wolston- 
craft and Charles Fourier, and more recently by John Stuart 
Mill. How remarkable the outcroppings of uncleanness in the 
record of those reformers ! Mary Wolstoncraft teaches her sex 
to abhor marriage as a form of slavery ; and not until her third 
illegitimate child brings upon the domicile of herself and her 
paramour the indignation of a British mob does she consent to 
convert her lover into a husband—not for the sake of decency, 
but that she might obtain for him the protection of the law. 
Fourier in one sentence defines lust in a manner that would 
have pleased the crude devotees of I sis and Osiris, and in the 
next teaches that the secret of the future progress of the race 
lies in so enlarging the freedom of man and woman that the 
fact of chastity shall disappear and the thought of it become 
ridiculous. A disciple of Fourier, Robert Dale Owen, procures, 
as a member of the Indiana legislature, the passage of the 
'easiest' divorce law yet enacted, except in Wisconsin. Til- 
ton advocates the Wisconsin law, whereby the bond of mar- 
riage may be severed by the mere consent of the parties who 
make it. Mrs Woodhull scorns marriage, and procures a di- 
vorce from the husband she professes to love, in order that she 
may live with two divorced husbands under the same roof, in 
that freer relation which Fourier advocates, called the har- 
monial or complex marriage. Beecher marries the wife of 



NEW DEFINITION OF CHASTITY. 175 

McFarland to the dying bod}' of her legal seducer, the man 
who had ventured to address her ' My darling wife ' while she 
was still living with her lawful husband, as if the mummery of 
the marriage ceremony could cleanse their guilt. John Stuart 
Mill, the foremost apostle of woman's freedom, takes to him- 
self the wife of another, who had not been even accused of un- 
kindness toward her, for no other reason than that she in her 
4 woman's freedom' preferred a metaphysical seducer to a Chris- 
tian husband. 

" Doubtless there are thousands of well-meaning ladies in 
the woman's rights movement who conscientiously den}- that it 
has any affinity with licentiousness. It ma}- tend, perhaps to 
correct this error when they observe the three publicly elected 
exponents of the woman's rights movement cowering together 
under the burden of a common shame, the legitimate result of 
an erroneous conviction as to the relations of the sexes to each 
other. 

" Whoever has read Tilton's pamphlet life of Mrs. "Woodhnll, 
wherein he extols that unblushing apostle of prostitution as a 
woman the ' spotless whiteness of whose character ' was above 
encomium, must have become satisfied that however silly a man 
must be to write in praise of the party of one who advocates 
strumpetry in the name of freedom, yet Tilton, with all his 
brilliant powers, had shown himself to be just as silly. He 
could only have done so, with an}' sincerity, by adopting a new 
definition of purity. This new definition Mrs. Woodhull's lec- 
tures, Tilton's articles on divorce, and Beecher's example in 
marrying Mrs. McFarland to the dying Richardson, all furnish. 
It is that that woman is chaste whose relations with men never 
violate the course of her free inclination, either by continuing 
with one of whom she is tired, or by failing to go to one of 
whom she is newly enamoured. Accepting this as the new 
definition of chastity, Mr. Tilton's praise, Mr. Beecher's liber- 
ality and Mrs. Woodhull's ' chastity ' are alike accounted for. 

" But with these convictions, what is likely to be their prac- 
tice? In all this exposure, let not Mr. Tilton for one moment 
suppose that he is to be vindicated. Avenged he may be. No 
more.' 

" He would never have placed it in the power of Mrs. Wood- 
hull to §o employ an equivocal and darkly-hinted scandal as 
deeply to affect the reputation of his own wife, had not his own 
relations with his revelator been as unguarded as his life of 
Mrs. Woodhull and Mrs. Woodhull's tale of scandal, combined, 



176 A SCATHING REVIEW. 

compel us to believe. There his drama of perdition begins. 
He has so often taught that if Caesar's wife must be above sus- 
picion, so also must Cornelia's husband, that he need feel no 
surprise if the world is slow to sympathize with him when the 
adventuress w r hom he has publicly commended to the world as 
of ' stainless purity ' charges the wife whom he knows to be so, 
with dishonor. Again : Mr. Tilton, as an advocate of ' free- 
dom for woman ' in its most odious sense, has been too sincere 
to feel, and too logical to express, that just indignation which 
one not professedly a free-lover w y ould have felt upon being 
made the victim of so blasting an infamy as this would have 
been to one who believed in the religious sanctity of marriage 
as a divine ordinance. A conservative man of honor would 
have probably shot Beecher — certainly would have cow-hided 
and exposed him. But Mr. Tilton, as an apostle of ' free-love * 
and woman's rights, was logically bound to regard the so-called 
1 crime ' as an appeal to his wife's sovereign rights over her 
own person in the exercise of his pastor's sovereign rights to 
believe and practice what Tilton taught, viz : the purity of per- 
fect freedom. Hence the secret written apology of Beecher, 
and the long and ' chivalrous ' silence of Tilton.' 

" Apart from the weak and corrupt views entertained by all 
these parties concerning the marriage relation, its divine sanc- 
tion and its perpetuity, how has this scandal come about?' 

" Eight years ago Theodore Tilton had the finest position 
and reputation, for a young man, in this country or age. He 
is an orator of first-class power, a poet of real merit, an editor 
of various talent. He is handsome, socially proud, and the 
husband of a lovely, petite, modest, accomplished wife. Mrs. 
Tilton is highly and most honorably connected — her father, the 
reverend Judge N. B. Morse of the supreme court, conservative 
on all moral and religious questions, and who was, we believe, 
a brother to the eminent S3'dney E. Morse and Prof. S. F. B. 
Morse. Their children are of a style of beauty at once spirit- 
ual, striking and rare. Whoever in those years had the pleas- 
ing fortune to accept the hospitality of this brilliant man and 
of his beautiful wife, must have retained forever the delightful 
image of that home. All that could conduce to make home 
lovely was there. Reputation, converse with noble minds, 
such as fame draws around the hearthstone of its fortunate 
possessor, a charming companion, whose very soul kindled 
each moment in pure worship of her admired husband, children 
whose smiles were like the radiance of angel's eyes when turned 



BEEGHER AN EPICURE. 177 

toward the throne of God, and the rustle of whose garments 
was graceful as the silent movements of forest birds when bath- 
ing in the holy Sabbath dawn — what more could Theodore Til- 
ton have sought or wished ? 

" Yet, in his profound egotism, he sought martyrdom. The 
martyrs onl} r were truly great ; he would link his name with 
some cause to-day odious, to-morrow glorified, and so after the 
cross wear the crown — as did Garrison, Wilberforce, Howard, 
and the rest. He advocated miscegenation, but nobody 
mobbed him. He boasted in every speech of having been 
mobbed in anti-slavery days. Few remembered that mob. 
Now, if he could but render himself odious by attacking the 
marriage relation, by striking a stalwart blow for woman's 
freedom, somebod} r , he sincerely hoped, would persecute him, 
and he would be immortal. This was his ambition. And now 
his martyrdom has come — all he ever sought, and directly, by 
the means he used, but of a character far more logical than he 
expected, the inexorable penalty due to false doctrine, the eter- 
nal cross that bears no crown save one of thorns. During 
those years the writer, on one occasion, by a chance question, 
turned the conversation upon Beecher, who was then among 
the daily visitors at Mr. Tilton's house. ' Is Mr. Beecher's 
inward life that which it seems to those who hear him ? I have 
been at a loss to conceive how one whose conscience is so sen- 
sitive as Mr. Beecher's seems, should boast himself to be the 
happiest man living. Deep moral sensitiveness more often 
makes men sad.' 

" Mr. Tilton answered, greatly to the writer's surprise : ' Mr. 
Beecher has a keen, intellectual discrimination on moral ques- 
tions, but he is personally an epicure, a voluptuary, though of 
the most refined sort, who does nothing — not even his preach- 
ing and praying — from a sense of duty, but only for the pleas- 
ure it affords him. It happens to make him happier to preacli 
than to race horses ; but if it made him happier to follow any 
other form of amusement he would pursue it. Doubtless, when 
you heard him declare himself the happiest man living, he felt 
so, but scores of times has he come to this house as to a den of 
refuge, thrown himself down on that sofa and groaned in mis- 
ery. You would have thought him the veriest wretch alive.' 

" Indeed ; what was the cause of his trouble?' 

" It is chiefly domestic ! His wife has no sympathy with his 
pains. She is a common-place, matter-of fact woman, who 
ought to have wed a merchant — not ' the great Beecher.' I 
8* 



178 SPOTLESS WHITENESS. 

have had my own difficulties with her, but these do not color 
m y judgment. She has even followed me to the front door and 
ordered me out of her house, while Beecher stood at the top of 
the stairs and said : ' Theodore, whatever Mrs. Beecher sa3's to 
you, remember that I am always your devoted friend ! ' " 

" But I am surprised that you speak of Beecher as a volup- 
tuary. I had thought him too unselfish and laborious for 
that." 

" No ; Beecher has no unselfishness. His tastes are aesthet- 
ic and cultivated, and he is a busy man because his capabilities 
for joyous activity are various. He enjoys preaching, editing, 
art, society, amusement, labor of certain kinds, and so on. 
But he is a voluptuary ; he does everything that he enjoys, and 
only because he enjoys it. Greeley is self-sacrificing. If I 
want an article for the Independent, Greeley will sacrifice his 
own ease to write it ; not because it is anything he wants to 
say, but because I, his friend, need his help. Beecher never 
writes on that principle. He would promise the article, and, 
if he found nothing more agreeable to do, he would write it ; 
not otherwise." 

" But Beecher is certainly industrious." 

" No ! He is lazy. He accomplished a vast amount of 
what from many would require work. But he does it because 
in his case it only requires the vigorous pla} T of his versatile 
powers. He prepares for his sermons on Sunday morning and 
afternoon. It is not work to muse for an hour over what one 
shall say for the next hour." 

"But is he not charitable and generous?" 

" All in the epicurean sense. He enjo3'S doing good, and 
gives as giving yields him pleasure." 

Mr. Tilton was then the warm and enthusiastic friend of the 
great preacher whom he thus criticised. We believe he had 
never formed the acquaintance of the wierd sister whose utter- 
ances are " inspired by Demosthenes." He had committed but 
the single error of adopting the theory that the reciprocal re- 
lations of men and women can be adjusted on the basis of 
equality and right, whereas nature intended them to rest on a 
basis of mutual inequality, interdependence and affection. In 
the very act of attempting to prove that boiling pitch is a very 
clean substance, snowy white and pure, he fell into the cauldron. 
If his catastrophe shall enable an} T to see in time that there is 
no " spotless whiteness " in those who would emancipate man 
or woman from that just subjection which is implied in Chris- 



SUFFOLK LETTER. 179 

tian marriage as distinguished from Fourieristic infidelity, that 
intersexual love, to be chaste, must be exclusive ; that its so- 
called " freedom " is its desolation and ruin, his martyrdom 
will not have been in vain. 

Eight here we will embody some correspondence which has 
an important bearing upon the subject in dispute, and which 
is frequently referred to in this work. It shows the connection 
of Mr. Henry C. Bo wen with the case, and will perhaps, in a 
measure explain the cause for that gentleman's forced silence 
during the excitement attending the revelations that were sub- 
sequently made. Mr. "Suffolk" who supplied these letters for 
publication is generally supposed to be Mr. Frank Moulton, 
the confidential friend of all the parties to the controversy. 
The reader will note that the letter of Mr. Tilton is dated 
immediately after his dismissal from Bowen's service, when 
excited over the treatment he had received, while the triparte 
agreement being dated more than a year after, shows that a 
long time elapsed before the effort was successful in binding the 
parties to secrecy. The following is the correspondence: 

To the Editor of the New York Times: — It is high time 
that the torrent of slander against Henry Ward Beecher be 
arrested. I have in my possession a copy of a disavowal of all 
the charges and imputations against Mr. Beecher ever made by 
Henry 0. Bowen, which was executed on the 2d of April, 1872. 
Without Mr. Beecher's knowledge, I have held this in my 
hands from that time to this, and now, without his knowledge, 
I give this document to the world and estop and convict the 
principal offender against truth, public decency and the rights 
of reputation. ^ 

My inducement to do this is the fact that Mr. Bowen has of 
late repeatedly declared that he had never disavowed his 
charges against Mr. Beecher, but that he yet insisted on their 
truth. And now the public can understand the brave silence 
which the great preacher has kept under this protracted storm 
of slander. He had covenanted to bury the past and to main- 
tain peace and brotherhood. The violation of that agreement 
by Henry C. Bowen unseals my mouth if it does not open the 
lips of tfte pastor of Plymouth Church. Suffolk. 

New York, May 29th, 1873. 



130 REBELLION IN CHRISTENDOM. 

Brooklyn", Jan. 1st, 1871. 

Mr. Henry 0. Bower : — Sir — I received last summer your 
sudden notices breaking my two contracts, one with the Inde- 
pendent, the other with the Brooklyn Union. With reference 
to this act of yours I will make a plain statement of facts. It 
was during the early part of the rebellion, if [ recollect 
aright, when you first intimated to me that Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher had committed acts of adultery for which, if you 
should expose him, he would be driven from the pulpit. From 
that time onward, your references to the subject were frequent 
and always accompanied with deep seated injury to your heart. 
In a letter which you addressed to me from Woodstock, June 
16th, 1863, referring to this subject, you said: — "I sometimes 
feel that I must break silence; that I must no longer suffer as 
a dumb man and be made to bear a load of grief most unjustly. 
One word from me would make a rebellion throughout Christ- 
endom, I had almost said, and you know it. You have just 
a little of the evidence from, the great volume in your posses- 
sion. I am not pursuing a phantom, but solemnly brooding 
over an awful reality." 

Subsequent to this letter and on frequent intervals from this 
till now you have repeated the statement that you could at any 
moment expel Henry Ward Beecher from Brooklyn. You 
have reiterated the same thing not only to me, but to others. 
Moreover, during the year just closed, your letters on the sub- 
ject were marked with more feeling than heretofore, and were 
not unfrequently coupled with your emphatic declaration that 
Mr. Beecher ought not to be allowed to occupy a position as 
Christian teacher and preacher. 

On the 25th of December, 1870, at an interview in your 
house, at which Mr. Oliver Johnson and I were, present, you 
spoke freely and indignantly against Mr. Beecher as an unsafe 
visitor in the families of his congregation. You alluded by 
name to a woman, now a widow, whose husband's death you 
did not doubt was hastened by his knowledge that Mr. Beecher 
had maintained with her an improper intimacy As if to leave 
no doubt on the minds of either Mr. Johnson or myself, you 
informed us that Mr. Beecher had made to you a confession of 
guilt, and had with tears implored your forgiveness. After Mr. 
Johnson retired from this interview, you related to me the case 
of a woman of whom you said (as nearly as I can recollect your 
words) that " Mr. Beecher took her in his arms." 



BOWEN DISMISSES TILTON. 181 

Dunns: your recital of this tale you were filled with anger 
toward Mr. Beecher. You said, with terrible emphasis, that 
lie ought not remain a week longer in his pulpit. You imme- 
diately suggested that a demand should be made upon him to 
quit his sacred office. You volunteered to bear to him such a 
demand in the form of an open letter, which you would present 
to him with your own hand, and you pledged yourself to sus- 
tain the demand which the letter should make — namely, " that 
he should, for reasons which he explicitly knew, immediately 
cease from his ministry at Plymouth Church, and retire from 
Brooklyn." The first draft of this letter did not contain the 
phrase "for reasons that he explicitly knew," and these words, 
or words to this effect, were incorporated in a second, at your 
motion. You urged, furthermore, very emphatically, that the 
letter should demand not only Mr. Beecher's abdication of his 
pulpit, but the cessation of his writing for the Christian 
Union, a point on which you were overruled. This letter you 
presented to Mr. Beecher at Mr. Freeland's house. Shortly 
after its representation you sought an interview with me at the 
editorial office of the Brooklyn Union, during which, with un- 
accountable emotion in your manner, your face livid with rage^ 
you threatened with loud voice that if ever I should inform Mr. 
Beecher of the statements which you made concerning his 
adultery, or should compel you to adduce the evidence on which 
you agreed to sustain the demand for Mr. Beecher's withdrawal 
from Brooklyn, you would immediately deprive me of my en- 
gagement to write for the Independent and to edit the Brooklyn 
Union, and that in case I should ever attempt to enter the 
offices of those journals you would have me ejected by 
force. I told you that I should inform Mr. Beecher or anybody 
else, according to the dictates of my judgment, uninfluenced 
by any authority from my employers. You then excitedly re- 
tired from my presence. Hardly had your violent words 
ceased ringing in my ears when I received your summary no- 
tices breaking up my contract with the Indepe?ident and the 
Brooklyn Union. To the foregoing narrative of fact I have 
only to add my surprise, and regret at the sudden interruption 
by your own act of what has been on my part a faithfnl service 
of fifteen years. 

Truly yours. Theodore Tiltok. 

We three men, earnestly desiring to remove all causes of 
offence existing between us, real or fancied, and to make Chris- 
tian reparation for injuries done or supposed to be done, and 



182 TRIPARTITE CO VBNANT. 

to efface the disturbed past and provide concord, good will and 
love for the future, do declare and covenant each to the other 
as follows : — 

1. I, Henry C. Bowen, having given credit, perhaps, without 
due consideration to tales and inuendoes affecting Henry 
Ward Beecher, and, being influenced by them, as was natural 
to a man who receives impressions suddenly, to the extent of 
repeating them (guardedly, however, and within limitations, and 
not for the purpose of injuring him, but strictly in the confidence 
of consultation), now feel that therein I did him wrong. There- 
fore, I disavow all the charges and imputations that have been at- 
tributed to me as having been by me made against Henry Ward 
Beecher; and I declare fully and without reserve that I know no- 
thing which should prevent me from extending to him my most 
cordial friendship, confidence, and Christian fellowship. And I 
expressly withdraw all the charges, imputations and inuendoes 
imputed as having been made and uttered by me and set forth 
in a letter written to me by Theodore TiltOn on the first day 
of January, 1871 (a copy of which letter is hereto annexed), 
and I sincerely regret having made any imputations, charges, 
or inuendoes unfavorable to the Christian character of Mr. 
Beecher. And I covenant and promise that for all future time 
I will never, by word or deed, recur to, repeat, or allude to any 
or either of said charges, imputations and inuendoes. 

2. And I, Theodore Tilton, do of my own free will and 
friendly spirit toward Henry C. Bowen and Henry Weird 
Beecher, hereby covenant and agree that I will never again re- 
peat by word of mouth or otherwise any of the allegations or 
imputations or inuendoes contained in my letter hereunto an- 
nexed, or any other injurious imputations or allegations sug- 
gested by or growing out of these ; and that I will never again 
bring up or hint at any cause of difference or ground of co .:- 
plaint hereunto existing between the said Henry C. Bowen and 
myself or the said Henry Ward Beecher. 

3. And I, Henry Ward Beecher, put the past forever out of 
sight and out of memory. I deeply regret the causes of suspi- 
cion, jealousy and estrangement which have come between us. 
It is a joy to me to have my old regard for Henry C. Bowen 
and Theodore Tilton restored, and a happiness to me to resume 
the old relations of love, respect and reliance to each and both 
of them. If I have said anything injurious to the reputation of 
either, or have detracted from their standing and fame as 
Christian gentlemen and members of my church, I revoke it 



WILKERSON'S STATEMENT. 183 

all, and heartily covenant to repair and reinstate them to the 

extent of my power. 

H. C. Bowen, 
Theodore Tilton. 
H. W. Beecher. 
Brooklyn, April 2d, 1872. 

While on this subject of the Tripartite covenant it is proper 
to add the testimony given subsequently before the Investiga- 
ting Committee by Mr. Samuel Wilkerson. The substance 
of this testimony is as follows, as supplied by that gentleman 
to the New York Herald: 

In the last week of March, 1872, Theodore Tilton came to 
my office in New York and took out of his pocket a worn press 
proof of a letter which he said he jmrposed to publish in the 
next issue of his paper, the Gclden Age, unless Henry Ward 
Beecher did him justice, and handed it to me to read. He 
said that he came to me because I had an interest in its publi- 
cation through my property in the Christian Union newspa- 
per, of which Mr. Beecher was editor, and through my partner- 
s-hip in the house which published his books, and because I 
was the common friend of himself and Mr. Beecher. The 
letter was as follows: 

[These followed the above letter from Tilton to Bowen. — 
Author.] 

I was shocked at the mischievousness of the matter he 
threatened to publish. I remonstrated with him against its 
publication. A discussion ensued, on his part passionate and 
noisy. He complained, first, that Henry 0. Bowen had with- 
out cause dismissed him from the editorship of the Independent 
and of the Brooklyn Union, and ruined him in fame, pros- 
pects and estate ; that he had crowned this wrong by refusing 
to pay him a large debt for editorial services, of which he was 
in pressing need, and compelling him to bring a suit to collect 
the amount. His next plaint was that Mr. Beecher had not 
helped him in his trouble-. He said that he was lying crushed 
on the sidewalk in Brooklyn under the misfortunes of losing 
his positions on the two papers, and the incomes derived from 
them, with the accompanying loss of the public respect and con- 
fidence — the loss, in a word, of the entire stored-up capital for 
his life career, and that Mr. Beecher, who had such power that 
with his little finger he could have lifted him up and reinstated 



184 THEY APPEASE 'TILTON. 

him, saw him in his agony and ruin, and passed by in silence 
and indifference on the other side of the way. Rising into a 
dramatic rage, and tramping my room from corner to corner, 
and speaking with intense passion, he declared " I will have 
revenge on him. I will pursue him into his grave." 

It was clear to me that what Mr. Tilton wanted was money, 
and that his purpose in coming to me was to raise money 
Omitting further details of this interview he left my office 
calm and happy, in the prospect of an arrangement I outlined 
that should immediately give him in hand, without the delays 
of a contested lawsuit, the money Mr. Bowen owed him and; 
that would restore his old relations to Mr. Beecher and Mr 
Bowen and procure for him restorative and flattering mention 
in the editorial columns of the Independent and cause to be 
inserted editorially in the Christian Union such handsome 
notice of his newspaper enterprise as should at once gratify 
and profit him. What is somewhat well known as the " Tri- 
partite Agreement" came from the negotiation initiated after 
this interview. Before it was drafted, but after its terms were 
settled, Mr. Bowen agreed to pay Mr. Tilton forthwith the 
amount of unpaid salary for which he had brought suit. He 
likewise promised to publish a card in the Independent, over 
his own signature, that should repair as fully as it could the in- 
jury done to Mr. Tilton by dismissing him from that paper. 
On the night of the 2d of April, 1872, whenthe tripartite agree- 
ment was ready for signature, Mr. Tilton was in a happy 
frame of mind. In conversation he especially overflowed with 
love and admiration Beecher- wards. 

This tripartite agreement, which I intended to be an estop- 
pel to two Of the parties to it, and a concordat all around, was 
in the words : — 

[These followed the above agreement, dated April 2d, 1872. 
— Author.] 

This paper was read at a meeting of four gentlemen, of 
whom Mr. Tilton was one, at a house in Brooklyn. He was 
more than satisfied with the paragraph concerning himself. 
He was charmed with it. He said he could conscientiously 
and heartily subscribe his name to every word of it. He said 
he would sign it twelve times over if that would induce Mr. 
Bowen to sign it once ; and in his eagerness he took up a pen 
to sign. But he was restrained by the suggestion of a wise and 
influential party to the conference that Mr. Bowen might be 



TILTON STORMS. 185 

less willing to sign the paper if Mr. Tilton should sign first. 
It was carried away without Mr. Tilton's signature. 

In a full and kind conversation between me and Mr. Tilton, 
after the meeting on the night of April 2d, broke up, he replied 
to a clear cut question I put to him, that the only ivrong Mr. 
Beecher had ever done him had teen to address improper lan- 
guage to his wife, and that for that he held in his hands an ample 
and satisfactory written apology. I repeated to him mention 
of a graver injury than that made to me by a person whose 
information was alleged to be derived, in part directly from 
himself, in part at second hand, from a confession of his wife. 
With great spirit he denied the truth of both these statements. 
He called the informant at second hand a sexually morbid 
monomaniac, who had imagined every word she uttered. He 
scornfully said that there was not a shadow of truth in her 
story. He expressed amazement that the other person should 
state that he had ever said that there was anything criminal in 
Mr. Beecher's conduct, and denied in the fullest and most 
energetic maimer that he had ever said so, or said anything 
that could be so construed by a truthful and healthy mind. 
And he returned to his previous declaration that Mr. Beecher's 
sole offence was improper language to his wife, and repeated it 
anew, and again repeated that the written confession and 
apology he had in keeping was ample atonement for that 
wrong. 

The next morning, on the 3d of April, Mr. Tilton came to 
my office, in the Equitable Insurance Company's building. He 
was flushed and sullen. There was a hitch in the money pay- 
ment. He said abruptly that he would not sign the agree- 
ment; that it would have to be altered before he would sign it. 
Kindling in anger as he talked, he said that in the negotiation 
Mr. Bo wen had been well taken care of by Mr. Claflin and Mr. 
Beecher well taken care of by me, but he had been left out in 
the cold with the money duo from Bowen unpaid. I comba- 
ted this fancy kindly and tried to soothe him and hold him to 
the arrangement he had made, but he flew out wild and de- 
clared with the utmost passion that he would never while he 
lived sign a paper that should disable him from pursuing 
Henry Ward Beecher, and he demanded a copy of his para- 
graph in the tripartite agreement, that he might alter it. I 
made a copy for him, and he sat down at a table and began to 
scratch and interline it; but he rose up and carried his work 
away uncompleted. Before he left I gathered from what he 



186 EFFICACY OF TEE CO VENANT DEFEATED. 

said that Mr. Bowen had refused to pay the full amount of his 
claim, and that his lawsuit would have to go on. 

But the full amount was paid within a day or two thereaf- 
ter, and the tripartite agreement was executed — not the one I 
drafted, and which was accepted by all the parties, but a mod- 
ification of that, I used my last copy of this instrument in 
my testimony before the committee, and I cannot show the 
changes of the original by a comparison of the two. I can 
now only say that all the portions of the agreement (above set 
forth in full) whi h are italicized were omitted from the 
agreement finally executed. 

The efficacy of the covenants I aimed at was lost and the 
compact was defeated. Tilton, in modifying his paragraph, 
backed out of his disavowal of his imputations on Mr. Beecher 
and his admissions that they were untrue, and carefully secured 
to himself the largest liberty to pursue the great preacher for- 
ever with innuendoes. My testimony before the committee 
shows the changes in the tripartite agreement as originally 
drawn, and which all the parties to it had heartily approved 
and had promised to sign. It also shows my earnest remon- 
strances against permitting these changes to be made and my 
warnings of the mischievous consequences that would inevita- 
bly follow." 



CHAPTER VITL 

A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF MR. BEECHER'S FIRST CHURCH, AND 
REMINISCENCES OF HIM AND HIS CONGREGATION AT LAWRENCE- 
BURG, INDIANA, AND HIS LABORS AMONG THE COLORED PEOPLE 
OF THE CINCINNATI SUBURBS. — HIS MARRIAGE TO THE AM- 
BITIOUS EUNICE LEIGHTON OF HILL FARM. MRS. BEECHER'S 

BOOK, " FROM DAWN TO DAYLIGHT," AND THE MYSTERIOUS 

MUTILATION OF THE CHURCH RECORDS. DEPARTURE OF THE 

BEECHERS FROM LAWRENCEBURG IN A BUGGY. — HIS CAREER IN 
INDIANAPOLIS, AND HOW HE PLAYED THE ROLE OF JOSEPH IN 
RESISTING THE ADVANCES OF THE FAIR MRS. POTIPHARS OF HIS 

CONGREGATION. — A ROMANCE OF TILTON. HOW HE SECURED 

BEECHER'S LOVE. IN THE ROLE OF A GOVERNOR OF A STATE. 

HIS FIRST MEETING WITH BEECHER AND HIS INFLUENCE ON HIS 
AFTER LIFE. " WALKING ON STILTS WITH HIS FACE HEAVEN- 
WARD." ANECDOTE OF BEECHER'S SON. 

"TTTHILE the excitement in New York was at its height and 
* * the great dailies in every issue devoted columns to the 
deeply interesting and exciting theme, the western journals 
partook of the excitement, and dispatched correspondents to 
the scenes of Mr. Beecher's early administrations to gather 
such incidents of his life as would add to the interest centering 
around the principal figures in the unrivaled scandal. One of 
these journals, the Chicago Times, as a result, gave on July 
27th a highly entertaining letter from Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 
from which extracts are here made : — 

Heniy Ward Beecher preached the first sermon of his life in 
this little city on the north bank of the Ohio river. 

187 



188 BEEGHEB AT LA WBENCEB UBG. 

A hundred miles by rail, mostly over the popular I. C. and 
L., — what is known as the " Kankakee," Cincinnati and Chicago 
Through line — under the able management of President In- 
galls, brought me to this very old and very quiet little Indiana 
town. It is among the oldest in this state, and was for years 
the menacing rival of Cincinnati. Legendary chronicles in- 
form us that but for the accidental death of an enterprising 
man widely connected with Ohio river commerce, in all proba- 
bility impetus would have been given to Lawrenceburg progress 
in preference to Cincinnati, and the result might have been 
that Cincinnati to-day would boast her 5,000 population while 
Lawrenceburg would put in her successful claim to a quarter 
of a million. For a commercial metropolis the site of Law- 
renceburg is far superior to that of the queen city, the latter 
being a pent-up Utica under the cliffs on which the truly good 
Deacon Richard Smith lives, while this village is finely situ- 
ated, with a " second-bottom" plain stretching back from the 
beautiful and dreanry Ohio river like the plains of Troy from 
the iEgean sea beneath the glories of a soft and seductive 
M} 7 sian sky. But Cincinnati, half a century ago, got the start 
of modest little Lawrenceburg, and their relative relations are 
reversed forever. 

Forty-five years ago, when Lawrenceburg was the chiefest 
commercial town in this commonwealth, when she boasted the 
best and largest buildings, the most enterprising and richest 
men, the handsomest women, the prospect of the first railway 
west of the Alleganies (a charter having been granted about 
that period for the " Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis railroad," 
two miles of which were constructed before your correspondent 
was born), and when her people had " made up their minds " to 
lead the advance guard of western development, fourteen of 
her citizens, Presbyterian in belief, organized themselves into 
"the first Presbyterian Church" of Lawrenceburg. They pro- 
ceeded immediately to erect a neat and substantial brick and 
stone church building, certainly one of the best edifices of that 
character in any village of the west at that time. It was fin- 
ished and dedicated in 1829. The course of the Ohio at this 
place being southwardly, streets leading from it extend west- 
wardly. This Presbyterian church, which is now invested with 
so much historic importance, in connection with Beecher and 
the scandal, stands here to-day precisely as erected, precisely 
as young and handsome and luxurious Heniy Ward entered 
upon his eventful career in it, and is assuredly as unique and 



HIS FIRST CHURCH. 189 

interesting an architectural link coupling the past and faded 
generation with the present, as the west can show. On a 
thoroughfare bearing the not very pleasingly suggestive name 
of " Short" street, extending from the river west toward the 
distant hills, two squares from the water's edge, stands this 
cosy little old building. It is not precisely a " wart of an 
edifice on a wrinkle of a hill," but reminds you, in its cob- 
webbed and grim}- appearance of a wrinkled and decrepit old 
man, one foot in the grave, and the other going speedily hence. 
When erected, it loomed up two full, strong stories high — the 
first story of rough stone, laid in mortar ; the second, of brick, 
nicely and neatly primed, and not by any means an unattract- 
ive structure. A broad 50-foot gable-end fronted on the street ; 
the depth was 60 feet ; and as there was no vestibule, but an 
entrance by two outside stairways leading directly up to the 
two front doors of ingress, the auditorium was 50x60, or 3,000 
square feet — not a backwoods hut in any respect. The base- 
ment was used for Sabbath school and for "sessions," while 
the more stylish and large hall above was devoted, as now, to 
the uses of the congregation in divine worship. The exigencies 
of city improvement have wrought no change in the substan- 
tial old church itself, but have materially metamorphosed the 
contour of the approaches, by filling up the street and the 
whole surroundings to within five or six feet of the floor of the 
second story. This simple fact of the old building being half 
buried from sight, (in spite of our rage for cremation) and but 
a few feet of the moss-covered and ragged stone work of the 
first stoiy at the front remaining visible, suggests age, death, 
interment, and fading forever from memoiy. Yet, stepping to 
one side and glancing over a short picket fence adown a path 
in the grass leading to a side entrance at the back of the 
building to the basement story, the actual and symmetrical 
proportions of the aged edifice loom up to the vision. My 
friend, Mr. Sparks, unlocked the old door, and it creaked on 
its rust}- hinges as he swung it back to admit us. I found a 
plain, airy, cleanly hall, 50x60, occupied by the cushioned 
pews, a Mason & Hamlin organ, a bookless new book-case, 
and a graceful modern reading-stand in the center of a dais, 
upon which lay a handsome copy of the bible. I found the 
dais neatly but unpretentiously carpeted. The only internal 
change since the days of Beecher was substituting this slightly 
elevated dais for the old-fashioned coop in the air, from which 
elevated box young and handsome Henry made his ministerial 
debut thirty-seven years ago. 



190 TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD. 

The name and fame of Henry Ward Beecher are just now 
abroad in the land. Four million readers desire to know some- 
thing of the introduction of this intellectual comet into the 
galaxy of eccentric orbs. Your correspondent came here pur- 
posely to investigate upon the ground, and come face to face 
with the ancient living witnesses. In Mr. Beecher*s famous 
Friday evening lectures he has, throughout his remarkable 
career in Plymouth Church, made the reading world familiar 
with " that obscure little pioneer town in Indiana." A multi- 
plicity of domestic details have fallen from his eloquent lips 
sandwiched between chunks of wisdom and pathos. They 
sound and read like fiction, yet have been ingeniously utilized 
to illustrate the sympathetic sermonizing of the great orator 
of Plymouth Church. Given as bits of hardship and personal 
experience in his own life, conquered by holy devotion and 
Christian perseverance, they carried all the force of a direct 
personal appeal to his hearers, and the contrasts between then 
and now in his personal affairs were ever present to the mind of 
the devoted admirer of Beecher. Under the circumstances of 
the attitude of fame reached by Brother Beecher and of the 
great scandal hanging over him like an avenging Nemesis, it 
may prove interesting to turn to Beecher's beginning. 

In 1837, Henry was twenty -four years old, and about to 
graduate from Lane theological seminary (under the direction 
of his father, the eminent Lyman Beecher), and go out into the 
gospel work of the wide world. This town was regarded as a 
"choice spot" of beginning by graduates of that college. Sit- 
uated but an hour or two by boat from the Queen city, youth- 
ful aspirants to the pulpit could run down here, try their hand, 
and go back to their dormitory or their sweetheart in a brief 
time. Whenever the pulpit of this church became vacant, all 
that was necessary was to send up to the " Lane," and ask for 
a " cadet." Sometimes for six successive weeks the pulpit 
would be occupied by as many different young men, either full- 
fledged graduates seeking a location, or those about to graduate 
and enter upon a career. Sometimes these experimenters upon 
the ears and credulity of hapless humanity proved anything 
but acceptable or agreeable. As an illustration, the story told 
of an old darkey will suffice. When a holy fledgling desired 
to air his wings, theologically speaking, and test his flights of 
fane}', if no better opportunity offered he was directed to the 
"missions" amongst the colored population in the outskirts of 
Cincinnati, One old "cullud brudder" was prevailed on to go 



SOON BECAME POPULAR. 191 

and "heah de gospil" one sweltering Sabbath. The following 
Sunday the same person sought out the " old cullud man" to 
accompany him again to " divine punishment," (as a Washing- 
ton friend of mine alwa}'S called divine worship). " Cum go 
an' heah de gospel ob Jesus to-day, Uncle Abraham!" "No, 
sah, no sah ! ncbber ! " sternly answered Uncle Abraham, " dis 
niggah is no gwine clown clar fur dem j T oung chickens to prac- 
tice darsels on meah ! No, sah ! " 

At all events, the Presbyterian church of Lawrenceburg was 
minus a minister in 1837. A call on Lane seminary was made. 
Successive Sabbaths several 3-oung graduates came down, 
j'oung Beccher among the rest. He preached two or three 
times ; was liked ; proposed to become their regular preacher, 
and finally was accepted. In a contest like that, where the 
church took " pick and choice" from a dozen, it was regarded 
an honor to win the prize — an honor conferred by the intelligent 
congregation and membership. And }'Oung men were con- 
sidered peculiarly fortunate to walk directly into a substantial 
old community, and into a large and paid-for church edifice, com- 
modious, and elegant for the age, instead of going to some 
home or foreign mission, to preach on the street, or in log-cabins, 
or in the woods— 

" The groves were God's first temples." 

In fact, in this precise way, the present pastor of " the First 
Presbyterian church "of Lawrenceburg, young and gentlemanly 
Rev. Mr. Little, came here, while contemplating missionary 
work in the wilds, and among the heathen of Mexico. 

Thus, thirty-seven years ago, young Beecher came, and 
entered upon his work in the ministry. He soon became pop- 
ular, and started on his career of world-wide fame. I spent 
several hours to-day hunting up old church books. I thought 
b} r consulting them, and all the records and entries made by 
Henry Ward, way back there in the dim past, I might obtain a 
better impression of his two years' occupancy of this pulpit, 
first as " stated supply," and secondly as the regular pastor, 
than from an}- other source. At least such impressions would 
have the merit of accurac}', springing from so authentic a 
fountain as ' record evidence.' A diligent search, assisted by 
Mr. Sparks, Jr., a former journalist (whose kindness I wish 
hereby to acknowledge), discovered the real, genuine, original, 
yellow, musty records, in the safe care of a leading member 
and oftieer of the church, Dr. Vance. In a most agreeable way, 



192 RECORDS MUTILATED. 

the Doctor and his good lady received your correspondent ; and 
from a quantity of brown old record books, dusty, and cob- 
webbed, with the rich smell of antiquity hovering about them 
like a halo, the little brown and worn first record book of this 
church, five by seven inches in surface, containing perhaps 
about one hundred and fifty pages of 3 r ellow-stained paper, was 
brought forth. It contained not only the record of the organiz- 
ation of the church, but covered the years of 3 r oung Beecher's 
pastorate and many bej^ond. I turned to 1837, in search of 
the record, in Beecher's own handwriting, of his first " session." 
Ah ! me ! I was doomed to disappointment. Some vandal 
hand had ruthlessly torn out the first two leaves of his records. 
Upon a further examination, the surprising, and, to the mem- 
bers of the church present, unaccountable fact was revealed to- 
ns that in addition to the leaves torn from the first of Mr. 
Beecher's records, fifteen leaves of the last of his own records 
were cut out, leaving but a meagre three remaining ! What 
this singular mutilation signifies no one could precisely tell, 
but by one of the gentlemen present (a Sabbath-school pupil 
of Mr. Beecher's and present communicant of the church) " an 
opinion as is an opinion " was unhesitatingly expressed. He 
remarked : 

" There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. or Mrs. Beecher 
has sent some one to perform this piece of vandalism and tear 
out these pages, as the facts they would disclose might possibly 
be very unsavory in contrast to such autobiography as Mrs. 
Beecher issued in her volume entitled ' From Dawn to Day- 
light,' and also in connection with such history as Mr. Beecher 
is now so speedily making." 

The little volume of musty records proved interesting ; and 
no mutilations of any other part appeared. The six pages so 
kindly left to posterity by the vicious vandal, every word and 
line in Beecher's own handwriting, are not freighted with any 
very alarming manuscript, — not a word about Mrs. Tilton, — 
not a line of the rampant, cuckolded, and ambrosial Theodore, 
— and not even a prophetic sentence of the coming Victoria 
Claflin Woodhull. Yet, notwithstanding these grave oversights, 
I extract a few excerpts from his entries, which I here insert : 

" Lawrenceburg, Nov. 19th, 1837. — Session was constituted with prayer 
by Rev, George Beecher, moderator. Mr. Thomas Hunt of Elizabethtown 
sat as corresponding elder. The following persons were received into 
communion of the church by letter (here follow the names of five persons 



HIS FIRST REBELLION. 193 

named Gage) from the Central Presbyterian Church of New York City. 
* * * The session then adjourned. 

H. "VV. Beecher. 
" Stated supply." 

"Jan. 13th, 1838. — * * * The following persons being examined and 
giving satisfactory evidence of a change of heart, were admitted to the 
church. * * * 

"H. W. Beecher. 
" Stated supply." 

" LawrenceburCx, , 1838, * * * Joined about this time also: 

* * * Mr. Thomas Guard, by examination, Mrs. Eunice Beecher (by 
letter)." 

This last lady was his then 3'oung and clashing, and present, 
wife. This entry follows the regular record of the session, and 
his name is not signed to it. 

" Lawrencebijrg, Sept. 26th, 1838, — A meeting of the church having 
been appointed from the pulpit the Sabbath previous, the church met and 
elected Mr. Basset chairman, and Mr. Thomas Guard, secretary. The 
following resolutions were then read and unanimously adopted. 

"H. W. Beecher. 

On the same page with this last entiy is pasted a clipping 
from a newspaper, containing a series of half a dozen or more 
resolutions. As indicating a characteristic of Henry Ward 
Beecher, permit me to quote briefly from them, under the head 
of Beecher's First Revolution. 

■Sp - "Sfcr "bf" 7F 9fc yp vfc vp 

" 3. Resolved, That this church withdraws from the preslry- 
tery of Oxford, and is from this time an Independent Preslyyte- 
rian church. 

4. Resolved, That there has occurred no change whatever in 
our doctrinal views and forms of worship — the only change 
being in dissociating ourselves from the ecclesiastical courts of 
the Presbyterian church. 

5. Resolved, That this church approves oi the pastoral ser- 
vices of the Rev. H. W. Beecher, and it is their wish that he 
continue their pastor." 

Thus we see that within a twelvemonth after this remarkable 
youth had launched out for himself he rebelled from the pres- 
bytery and the "organized church," and set up shop " on his 
own hook." About that time he had added a rib to his ana- 
tomical economy, b}^ taking unto himself a Miss Eunice 
9 



194: MBS. EUNICE BEEGHEB. 

Leigliton, a bright, ambitious, willful, energetic, fame-loving, 
gold-worshiping country girl from " Hill Farm," (her father's 
abode,) in Massachusetts. She had been jilted by a rich Bos- 
ton roue named Dalton, whom she afterward denounced as " a 
self-conceited young man, utterly devoid of delicacy, and noth- 
ing doubting but that half a million could buy the fairest lady 
in the land." 

In her autobiography, "From Dawn to Daylight," Mrs. 
Eunice Beecher describes herself as, at that time, a very young 
girl, "• very beautiful " in her " fond mother's eye," and who wore 
u rich auburn curls." Later through the book she contrasts 
herself to the wife of George Beecher, brother of Henry W., 
and, calling herself Maiy, sa} T s : 

" Mary's figure was larger, and not so graceful or dignified, and her 
educational advantages had been far inferior. She was inclined to "grieve 
over this, fearing that she might not prove, in all things, such a wife as 
her loving heart believed her husband must deserve." 

(Perhaps this accounts for the trouble with Mrs. Tilton.) 
Mrs. Beecher further says of herse'f : 

" Her hair was of dark chestnut, folded neatly around a well-shaped 
head, with a low brow, blue eyes, and clear, rosy complexion." 

With his young wife, in 1838, Mr. Beecher quit boarding and 
went to " house-keeping" in apartments which I have inspected 
to-day. I only refer to this trivial matter because Mr. Beecher 
is so very fond of calling the attention of his millionaire and 
aristocratic Plymouth Church audiences to it. Mrs. Beecher 
in her book pictures the apartments and all the surroundings 
as simply terrible. The same building is standing to-da} r , and 
the apartments which the Beechers occupied more than a third 
of a century ago are just as they were then. The} r comprise a 
suite on the second floor, the full width of a large brick-house — 
not less than twenty-five feet front. Furnished as she pictures 
the}^ were, after her deft and industrious Yankee hands had 
completed the cleaning and " fixing up," I should think any 
3 T oung couple who hadn't money enough to buy a cooking stove, 
or even a bed (as she says the}^ had not until she sold a cloak 
her father gave her in Boston, for $30 in silver), would feel 
very comfortable in them. The front (on the street) was west, 
and the rear apartment, opening on to a veranda, overlooked 
the rolling Ohio river, with the lovely Kentucky hills for a back- 
ground, — a scenic picture for an artist. The entrance to these 



AN OCTOGENARIAN INTERVIEWED. 195 

delightful apartments was b}^ an easy flight of stairs to the 
veranda. And while residing in these two rooms, with a 
young wife to love and a 3 T oung church to preach to, Henry 
Ward Beecher began his clerical career. He was self-reliant, 
courageous, ambitious, — if as winning as described to me, he 
was the living, breathing impersonation of poetry, passion, 
grace, wit, daring, tenderness, and every other fascinating 
qualit}\ 

Lawrenceburg was then a thriving and interesting little city, 
with more good brick business buildings than any other town 
in Indiana. The first four-story brick block erected in the 
state was then standing at the corner of the ver}^ same square 
in which young Henry Ward and his Yankee wife occupied 
rooms. It stands there yet, a village hostelry conducted by 
old uncle 'Squire Anderson. 

During my brief sojourn here, I have met numerous present 
members of the old Beecher church, but learned that only five 
or six persons who were members under his preaching thirty- 
seven years ago, can now be found in this community. Most 
of the old flock have died. I did not deem it advisable or 
practicable to hunt up the old cemetery and interview the 
grave-stones, though I had no doubt whatever that could many 
of those sleeping beneath them who listened to and loved 
Beecher j~oung and good, see the shame which does not bring a 
blush to Beecher old and hypocritical, their very bones would 
scramble through the sod and gladly express to the world 
through an interview in The Times their sad indignation. But 
I found the next best thing to a cemetery, and give you the 
result of a talk with an octogenarian. 

" I was introduced to an old gentleman who sat under the 
droppings of young Beecher's wisdom, and who has resided 
here and remained a member of that church to this hour.' 

" ' How did you like Mr. Beecher, when he was with you?' I 
asked. 

" ' Oh, we liked him first rate, I tell } T e,' was his prompt 
reply. 

" ' I suppose 3*ou regretted it, when he left you for Indian- 
apolis ?' 

" ' Yes, yes, we did that. We could never understand why 
he did go, unless to please his wife. She was vain. He was 
ambitious, I s'pose, too.' 

" ' Permit me to ask how often Mr. Beecher comes back to 
see his first flock? I observe that he constantly parades 3'ou, 
or his life here, before his Brooklyn people.' 



196 BEECHER SELFISH AND SCHEMING. 



a i 



Oh, bless your life, he never has set foot in our town 
since he got into his buggy with his wife to go to Indianapolis. 
He has been to Cincinnati several times, an hour from here by 
rail, but bless your soul he never thought of us whom he claims 
to have loved with his young love.' 

" ' Why, sir, you astonish me ! I ejaculated.' 

"■'And is it possible Mr. Beecher ignores you? Has he 
never sent you a Sunday-school library or given the old church 
a check for five thousand dollars to reconstruct or modernize 
it?' I inquired.' 

" ' No, sir, no sir,' was the prompt and petulant answer. No, 
sir, never a visit, never a book, never a dollar of aid, no more 
than if he had never heard of us, than if we had never given 
him a good start on his grand career, never helped him 
with our means and encouragement as perhaps few communi- 
ties and few churches would have done.' 

" ' Perhaps, my good friend, Mr. Beecher did not think he 
was kindty treated here, and ma} T be you seared his heart in- 
stead of blessing it,' I suggested. 

u ' How can that be,' my snow-white haired old friend 
exclaimed, ' how can that be so, when time and again, time and 
again, Mr. Beecher has said in his celebrated Friday evening 
lectures, that ' the happiest hours of my life were those I spent 
in the little town in the West the first two years of my ministry ?' 
Mr. Beecher was petted here as no one has been before or 
since.' 

" ' I am greatly surprised,' I remarked. I continued : 

" ' Will you give me your opinion of the general feeling in 
Lawrence concerning Mr. Beecher, and particularly as to his 
guilt or innocence of the immoralities charged?' 

" ' I think the general feeling is against him,' responded the 
old gentleman, ' and I am sure it is in our church, where he 
used to preach when I wasn't quite as old as I am now. I 
suppose people are divided in opinion as to his guilt ; but most 
of his old friends here think he is a man of the world, w r ho 
preaches for fame and gold, and then practices the very vices 
he denounces in the pulpit.' 

"Here our interview ended, and bidding the communicative 
old gentleman an adieu, I called upon a younger man, who 
was one of Beecher's Sunday-school scholars, for - man}' } T ears 
past a member of the old church, and now nearly fifty } T ears of 
of age. He gave me, substantially, the same opinion of Mr. 
Beecher that the elderly gentleman did ; that Beecher was a 



HIS MINISTRY. 197 

hypocrite ; had sacrificed Christianity for ' the world, the flesh, 
and the devil ;' loved gold and fame above all things ; was all 
for ' Beecher, Beecher ;' was selfish and scheming ; and simply 
preached sensational eloquence to win the world's favor and 
prove a ' success.' 

" ' Was Mr. Beecher your teacher in the Sunday school?' I 
asked. 

" 4 No, sir, but Mrs. Beecher was,' answered my friend. 

" ' I presume you were pleased with your teacher?' I sug- 
gested. 

" ' I wish I could answer you in the affirmative ?' 

" ' Of course you recollect her?' 

" ' Assuredly. My impressions of her are most vivid. Had 
I loved her I suppose I should have remembered her equally 
well ; had I been indifferent, I might have forgotten her ; but I 
disliked her so much that I never could forget her.' 

" ' Your impressions of Mrs. Beecher must have been unfor- 
tunate. What did you think?' 

" ' I thought she was vain and proud. In my boyish reason- 
ing, I thought she all the time acted as if she had come from 
some superior part of creation down among us pitiable heathen. 
I was too proud and too conscious of her faults to fall into her 
way of thinking ; and I was glad when she was gone.' 

About the same time when the above details regarding Mr. 
Beecher's ministry were published, there appeared in the Cin- 
cinnati Commercial the following relative to Mr. B's ministra- 
tions at Indianapolis to which point he repaired after separa- 
ting from his Lawrenceburg Charge. Writing from that city 
the correspondent sa3 T s : — 

" One of his first good works here was a revival, the like of 
which has never recurred in the history of the place. Young 
men and maidens, old men and matrons were moved by his 
eloquence, through the grace of God, to repentance, and for a 
while it seemed as if the New Jerusalem had been anticipated 
in this Indiana spot of earth. Among the matrons was one in 
her first youth, and as lovely as a peri, if one can imagine a 
stray angel from heaven's gates married to a pork packer and 
the mother of twins. Nevertheless was my heroine beautiful, 
and added to rare personal charms was a certain bewitching 
trustfulness or helplessness of manner that was calculated to 
make her a rather dangerous proselyte. One day in a private 
interview with Mr. Beecher (she told the story herself) she was 
so moved by his holy teachings that with face glowing with 



198 A JEALOUS HUSBAND. 

emotion, her eyes suffused in tears, and her voice broken with 
sobs, she threw her lovely arms around his neck and cried,' Oh, 
Mr. Beecher, save me !' 

" You must look to a higher power," was his brave repty, as 
putting both hands from about his neck, he fell on his knees 
and said : " Let us pray." 

In spite of himself, however, Mr. Beecher was the occasion 
of Jealous\ r . One gentleman in particular was supremely jeal- 
ous of his wife because the night before Mr. Beecher preached 
his farewell sermon she had not slept for crying. He did not 
sleep much either, and tortured by angry fears went to church 
with her in the morning, determined to see if the popular 
preacher knew and would take advantage of the hold he had 
upon the fair portion of his fold. Instead of that, he beheld a 
man with solemn mien, like one w r ho goes forth to death, the 
burden of whose praj'er was forgiveness of God and man for 
sins and shortcomings. It was as if he craved to enter the 
new and untrodden fields of the vineyard of the Lord with clean 
hands and shriven by the blessing of his tried friends. He 
seemed lifted out of himself, and the hour was a consecrated 
one to his hearers. To none more than the self-abashed, hum- 
bled husband whose lover-like tenderness to his wife thencefor- 
ward was received with sweet surprise. It is not patent that 
he ever communicated his suspicions to her. It does not take 
a man long to learn that it is not always best to tell his wife 
everything. 

With his great, liberal, noble nature and childlike simplicity 
Mr. Beecher did many things, no doubt, which wicked people 
with a regard to appearances could not understand. It is this 
class of people that are quick to say now, " He is no better 
than he should be." A more unconventional man, I suppose, 
never lived, and his friends are read}' to believe that some 
slight disregard of the common proprieties of life has been 
taken advantage of by his enemies. For instance, a friend 
who was invited to breakfast with him on one occasion found 
him in a lady's parlor in his shirt sleeves while she was sewing 
a button on his vest. On the other hand, there are many wom- 
en who are in a manner looking out for adventure, sensation, 
or insult, as the case may be, and it would be eas\ r for such a 
one to misunderstand the innocent kindness of Mr. Beecher. 
It should be remembered that he was never more of a favorite 
of women than of children and men. Those who were children 
when he lived here revere his memoiy, and there is not a mat- 



AN INNOCENT MAN. 199 

ron who was then a maiden that can recall a mean impression 
of him. On the contrary, it is borne in mind that not one of 
the few women of his acquaintance who have since been under 
ban, or who have dropped out of the charmed circle of society, 
was a favorite of his. It was not altogether accident which 
preserved him from their toils. 

" I had spent most of the day hunting up the old members 
of Mr. Beecher's congregation, when on the street I was hailed 
b}' a cheery voice with, ' How do you do?' 

" The face of the friend that met m} T view was as pleasant as 
his voice, and as I stopped to shake hands I asked, 4 What do 
you think of Mr. Beecher?' 

" ' I think him an innocent man,' was the repl}'. 

" My friend being a clergyman, I further asked his reason 
for the faith that was in him, and he said; — 

" I believe in Mr. Beecher's innocence from my knowledge 
of him years ago, and it was onty the other clay my confidence 
was sustained b}' hearsay. A co-missionary laborer of mine in 
India was at my house on his wa} T from the Presbyterian Gen- 
eral Assembly in St. Louis. He told me that he met there a 
Kentuck}' clergyman who is a cousin of Mrs. Tilton, and that 
in conversation with him about the Beecher-Tilton scandal, 
Mrs. Tilton's cousin said that she had assured him there was 
not a particle of foundation for the charges Mr. Tilton had 
made against Mr. Beecher that Mr. Tilton was insanely jealous 
of her, in fact, and his charges had no grounds but his morbid 
imagination.' 

" ' Perhaps you'd better not put that in print,' added my 
friend. ' It might make trouble between man and wife — Mr. 
and Mrs. Tilton, you know.' 

" The majority of persons interviewed in regard to Mr. 
Beecher were free to say that he could no longer afford to be 
silent — that silence would be taken for a confession of guilt, 
while a few were as reticent as Mr. Beecher himself — declaring 
their perfect confidence in his purity, and avowing their willing- 
ness to wait his own good time for an explanation of the mys- 
tery. Two or three persons accounted for his silence by say- 
ing he was ' screening somebod}-.' The expression struck me 
as peculiar, but in the delicate task of probing popular senti- 
ment it will not do to appear inquisitive, and I waited patiently 
for light. 

" ' You see,' at length said a gentlemen, ' Mr. Beecher is 
evidently screening somebody. I think he is screening his 
wife.' 



200 "FROM DA WJY TO DA YLIGHT" 

" I did not exactly understand how that could be, but I took 
good care not to say so, and after a pause the gentleman pro- 
ceeded as follows : — 

" Perhaps I had as good an opportunity of knowing Mr. 
Beecher in his domestic relations as any one in his charge, and 
I never have seen such devotion as Mrs. Beecher manifested 
toward her husband. Never did a woman love her husband 
better. It was the outpouring of the purest and holiest affec- 
tion. He loved her as much as most men love their wives after 
the he3'-day of the honeymoon is over ; but she was older than 
lie, and would likely be more watchful than a young woman. 
He was absorbed in his books, his work and his flowers. May 
it not be that as the habit of being thus absorbed grew on him 
she got jealous of him ? I knew her to be good and true, but 
it is not to be supposed she kept pace with him in intellectual 
development or personal popularit}*. Seeing him surrounded 
b} r every variety of attractive women — young, accomplished, 
and beautiful women — it would not be unreasonable to suppose 
her jealousy was excited. Some time she may have dropped 
an inadvertent word that the scandal-mongers have interpreted 
into a grave accusation." 

From other accounts Mrs. Beecher is quite the peer of her 
husband. The 3 T ears that have made him the least bit puffy 
and inclined to corpulency, have framed her roseate complexion 
in a wealth of silver hair, and her deep blue eyes are as clear 
and pure as azure, while there is a repose in her manner that 
sets every one at ease, and is quite enchanting. 

For the most part, however, the recollection of Mrs. Beecher 
is not held in high esteem in Indianapolis, and in his visits 
here she has never accompanied him. The trouble is, in an 
evil hour she was tempted to write a book, and for want of a 
more familiar subject indulged in a species of autobiography 
under the title of " From Dawn to Daylight," in which the 
trials and vicissitudes of her life in the West were minutely 
described. This could not well be done without other dramatis 
personal than herself and family, and the mirror she held up to 
nature was not as flattering as that in which we are wont to see 
ourselves. In the then primitive condition of society the hum- 
ble beginnings of fortune and influence were not as well 
crusted over as they are now-a-days, and the blood in our veins 
may not have been as blue as it was in the Aicinity of Boston, 
but the hearts were as true, the kindness as extreme, and the 
appreciation as keen as could be found anywhere in the world. 



THE ULCER PROBED. 201 

In some of the comments upon the Beecher trouble I thought 
I could perceive a lingering pique caused by Mrs. Bencher's 
book, and I was at some trouble to hunt it up. It could not be 
found, and I was told the edition had been recalled. Those 
who happened to have a copy said they cared so little for pos- 
sessing it that it had been mislaid. The generally expressed 
opinion was that it was the most slanderous production ever 
penned by a woman. It did violence to the good and true 
friends who had stood by her so faithfully in the trying hours 
of her pioneer life. Mrs. Beecher, it is said, wrote the book 
so quietly, and had it published so clandestinely, that her hus- 
band did not know of it until he found it on his table. So he 
told his old friends here, speaking of it with deep regret, his 
own heart beating with such true and fond love for the friends 
in his Western home. 

While the author does not desire to vary materially in this 
narrative from the official proceedings, he feels that the reader 
will pardon him for embodying here a letter written from 
Brooklyn Heights on July 21, 1874, to the Pittsburg Commer- 
cial, giving as it does so much bearing upon the case, and per- 
haps a little romance as well. 

On the first day of the year 1873, 1 gave you some particulars 
of a church scandal in which the Pastor of Plymouth Church, 
Henry Ward Beecher, was mentioned. It was not a pleasant 
topic on which to write or speculate. Since then, it has been 
the theme of many a plodding journalist, from the editor-in- 
chief to the Bohemian scribe. The culmination was reached 
last evening. Theodore Tilton, goaded to desperation, appear- 
ed before a committee of the leading members of Plymouth 
church. He was attended by two life-long friends, Frank 
Moulton, an old school-mate, and Frank Carpenter, the gifted 
artist who painted Lincoln and his Cabinet, and author of 
" Six Months in the White House," and a man whom Professor 
Fowler, in his work on Phrenology, gives as his highest type of 
the organic quality. He contrasts him with the idiot Emerson, 
and says: "He is pre-eminently fine-grained, pure-minded, 
ethereal, sentimental, refined, high-toned, intense in emotion, 
full of human nature, most exquisitely susceptible to impres- 
sions of all kinds, most poetic in temperament, lofty in aspira- 
tion, and endowed with wonderful intuition as to truth, what 
is right, best," etc. 
9* 



202 TILTON'S FIRST APPEARANCE. 

With these two men at his side, Theodore Tilton probed the 
ulcer which has been gnawing at his heartstone for the past 
four years. Surrounding the house, in a drenching rain, were 
perched a legion of the members of the press. The committee 
rose at one hour past midnight. Theodore Tilton came out 
with his friends, and in response to a question from a dozen of 
the reporters as to whether the committee would furnish his 
statement, said: "I know not whether it is obtainable ; but I 
know it is unanswerable. " The Tribune of this morning says, 
editorially: "The reticence as to the nature of either charges 
or proof comes late. There has been too much promptness in 
seeking publicity heretofore, or there is too little now. as it is 
but fair to suppose that if Tilton proved nothing, the fact would 
have been flashed over two continents." I will imagine you, 
dear Commercial, in the city of churches, interviewing your 
correspondent. 

Do I know Theodore Tilton ? Well, yes, somewhat. We 
were born on the same block, within sight of Printing-House 
Square, and went to the same public school, but were never 
very intimate. His boyhood was passed among books, and he 
was never given to any of the rompish frivolities so natural to 
youth. Many a time have I sat on the fence that separates our 
homes and watched his wan face, from the sides of which fell 
a mass of golden hair. He was never without a book, and 
always in a pensive mood. Like a hot-house plant, he bloomed 
at an early age. While boys, we both drifted into journalism. 
Twenty years ago no youngster on the New York press gave 
fairer promise of a brilliant career than Theodore Tilton. Be- 
fore he was out of his teens, he was one of the most reliable and 
rapid of phonographers, and while reporting lectures and poli- 
tical meetings for the Tribune, he attracted the notice of 
Horace Greeley, to whom Tilton was always warmly attached.' 

Why did he not stick by the Tribune ? 

Well, you see, he drifted over to Brooklyn, where every young 
man, to be deemed respectable, must regularly attend church. 
It is the open sesame to the social circle. The worldliness he 
encountered on the secular press was every way repugnant to 
him. No young man was more orthodox in his religious faith 
than Theodore. He became one of the shining lights of Ply- 
mouth Church; eschewed the secular papers entirely ; delved 
deep into theology, and looked patronizingly down on the 
acquaintances of his boyhood. He was no Pharisee. His egot- 
ism was his predominating characteristic, but he was always 



HIS FACE TURNED HEA YENWABB. 203 

affable and courteous. His paradise was the gilt-edged com- 
munity on the Heights, and his a3sthctic tastes caused him to 
avoid the rendezvous where Bohemians most did congregate. 

He was married in 1855, by Mr. Beecher, to Miss Elizabeth 
Richards, who, for some time, had been one of Mr. Beecher's 
flock. Theodore closely identified himself with Plymouth 
Church, and, when but a few years past his majority, became 
the protege and coadjutor of his pastor. They were the closest 
of friends. In the year 18G0 they, with Henry C. Bowen, 
were the Trinity of Plymouth. The Plymouth deacons were 
really spoony over " Theo." Some of them thought they saw in 
his face a resemblance to that of our Savior, and it was not 
long before he seemed t be walking on stilts, with his face 
turned heavenward. He and his pastor were inseparable. As 
an evidence of the friendship which existed between them, I 
will relate an incident that happened. 

One of the first regiments formed in the City of Brooklyn 
for the defense of the Union was the Long Island phalanx. 
Among its officers was one of the sons of Beecher. While 
the army was being organized under McClellan, young Beecher 
committed some breach of discipline, and was placed under 
arrest. The affair greatly alarmed and agitated his father, 
who immediately counseled with Tilton as to the course he 
should take to shield his son from disgrace. Tilton asked 
Beecher for his (Beecher's) pocketbook, and took from it fifty 
dollars. He took the first train for Washington, and on reach- 
ing there, went direct to the house of Secretary of War Cam- 
eron. Mr. Cameron was dressing preparatory to entertaining 
a break fast party of Governors of States. Tilton ascertained 
this fact from the servant, and, of course, announced himself 
as a Governor. He met Cameron, challenged his admiration, 
enlivened the table, and when the guests had departed, impor- 
tuned for a commission for young Beecher in the regular army. 
Tilton would not be satisfied with a promise, and after an 
interview with President Lincoln, secured the desired commis- 
sion. His subsequent inquiries at the camp of the regiment 
justified the wisdom of his course. He returned by the next 
train, handed Mr. Beecher the commission, at which his friend 
and patron fell on his breast and wept tears of gratitude. 
Theirs was no ordinary friendship, seemingly. Beecher's light 
reflected on Tilton, and he was happy. 

Have I seen him lately ? Oh, yes ; we are not much fur- 
ther apart than we were in boyhood. We live on the same 
street. 



20tt HE IS BACKED TO THE WALL. 

Is he insane ? Oh, that is only the screeching of the Eagle 
from its serie under the Bridge. 

What do I think about the scandal ? Very little. I gave 
up thinking about it long since. 

My opinion ? That's of very little account. Has not Mayor 
Hunter, Mr. Tracy, Mr. Shearman, who was Fisk's attorney, 
and now clerk, of Plymouth Church, Joe Howard, and that 
legion of mutual friends of Mr. Beecher and Tilton, said that it 
amounted to nothing ? You must certainly know that for the 
past two years it has been social ostracism for any one in this 
community to hazard one word that would dispel the mist that 
has so long covered this city like a pall. To opine that Tilton 
had a case was worse than sacrilege. To be seen walking with 
him was to encounter the gaze of thousands of angry eyes. 

Think he will come out all right? riot much; he will bleach 
a great deal, however. He certainly could not be blacker than 
they have painted him. 

By what process ? Sunshine will do it. The mutual friend 
has been his curse. Their desires for the pastoral pressure of 
Mr. Beecher was keener than their sympathy for Theodore, 
and they have all cried, " Hush ! " 

The fact is, it has been quibble, quibble, from, beginning 
to end. The papers have been playing the hurrah game, 
and, the worst of all, they have continued throwing their 
javelins at Tilton until he is now backed up to the wall. 

Can Tilton vindicate himself in any way ? I should think 
that if he could not he had better take a header from the 
ferry boat. Brooklyn may, like the ostrich, push its head into 
the sand, but the cyclone will sweep on just the same. Thun- 
derbolts have been darting in every direction for the past four 
years, doing but little or no damage, not even clearing the 
atmosphere; but that bolt of Dr. Bacon's has at last struck a 
vital part. In fact, it was his lightning that did the mischief. 
The luse it fired is burning slowly, but yet is as unquenchable 
as if it was trained through the lowermost confines of the 
infernal regions. 

No proofs? Why not take a common-sense view of this 
matter ? It has got to be done, sooner or later. What other 
divine in the land could stand such a racket? Trinity, in New 
York, had its Onderdonk, and Tremont Temple, in Boston, its 
Kalloch, and the Christian religion still survives. 

Warm in his defense? Not a bit of it. I would rather re- 
main dumb if I could ; but when you see a man battling with 



UNSWERVING FATE. 205 

a legion of foes, it makes one's blood boil to see "Tray, Blanche 
and Sweetheart" snapping so sharply. Why, the impudent 
stare of some of these curs has been cast into the face of every 
shapely and comely woman that crossed the Fulton ferry. 

Why has he maintained silence so long? Ask Frank Moul- 
ton or Frank Carpenter. They have been his keepers. The 
solution of the query should be left to the man it most con- 
cerns. I am not his apologist. His was a grievous fault, and 
grievously hath he answered it. Tilton was always a radical 
— always ready to espouse some obnoxious doctrine. The 
sanctity of the marriage tie is not as strong in this communi- 
ty and some others as it should be. That mummery over 
the death bed of Richardson was a terrible piece of sacrilege ; 
and ever since the mills of the Gods have been doing some 
crushing work under heavy pressure. Tilton is pretty 
thoroughly pulverized. When he found these fell destroyers 
had not spared his hearthstone, he became paralyzed, and then 
he allowed his friends to strap his cross to his back, when they 
pushed him into the abyss, on the side of which he has ever 
since been clinging. Here this drama of perdition began. 

The result? Wait for the culmination, and then rush in 
among the mangled and dying, where you can hear their cries 
of anguish and despair. 

Did he sign the covenant ? ISTo, not as originally drawn. 
You see, Tilton had been deserted by Bowen and cast adrift. 
They had recited to each other their grievances. Tilton had 
his moments of petulant decision. The mutual friends saw 
that Tilton must be muzzled. So Samuel Wilkeson, the vet- 
eran Washington correspondent of the Tribune and Times dur- 
ing the Avar, drew up a compact. Tilton could not swallow it 
all ; so it was modified, and then they each signed it — Beecher, 
Bowen and Tilton. This was in the early part of 1872. Sub- 
sequently, " Suffolk " furnished it to the press. This was the 
first boiling over of the pitch. Wilkeson is part owner of the 
Christian Union, and a partner in the Christian publishing 
house of J. B. Ford & Co. He is a perfect Hotspur in tem- 
perament. Had any man desecrated his household, his hours 
would have been numbered on this earth. There would have 
been no covenants or compromise, or anxiety for the Christian 
Church, etc., etc. But in this imbroglio he became the diplo- 
mat, lie was interested in Mr. Beecher's reputation in more 
ways than one, as is many another man. To think of Sam 
Wilkeson, with his keen perception, and knowledge of men 



206 SHEARMAN DI8MA TED. 

and things, who has probed more mountains of corruption 
than tongue can tell, temporizing with this affair, is enough to 
make one lose all faith in the human race. 

What brought about the last phase of this affair? Tilton en- 
deavored to get a word in edge-ways at the Church Council, 
but the Moderator would not have it. Fate, unswering and 
unalterable fate, selected two instruments to carry out its de- 
crees. These were Thomas Shearman, of Fisk and Gould no- 
toriety, and the Rev. Dr. Bacon. Shearman managed Mr. 
Beecher's interests, while the Rev. Dr. Bacon, a contributor to 
the Independent, Bowen's paper, was the unwitting tool of 
Bowen, who, like a deer-stalker, has been crawling on his 
stomach with his eye on the sun for years, 

These men in godliness resemble each other as much as Hy- 
perion does the Satyr. Shearman, in an interview with an ed- 
itor < f the Brooklyn Union, pronounced Mrs. Tilton a spirit- 
ualist and expressed his doubts of Tilton's sanity. The editor 
was a friend and former coadjutor of Tilton, while he was 
chief of the Union. Tilton sent for him and questioned him 
as to the truth of the statement. The editor stated that he 
had not exaggerated, but on the contrary, had eliminated 
much that was offensive. This he put in the form of an affi- 
davit, and then Tilton went for Shearman. He informed him 
by letter that he had done him (Tilton) and his family gross 
injustice, and offered him an opportunity to retract the offen- 
sive remarks, which was to be done in the presence of a wit- 
ness, who was none other than Tilton's Fidus Achates, the 
ubiquitous Moulton. Shearman met Tilton at Moulton's 
house, and here the retraction was made in writing. Tilton, 
who, though notwithstanding he has committed the most 
egregious blunders in managing this unfortunate affair, is a 
natural diplomatist, thought he would put a bee in Shearman's 
bonnet, touched the messenger alarm, which was quickly an- 
swered. A message was sent to Henry Ward Beecher. It 
was a request that he would step over to Moulton's. He came 
and was informed that he was invited to be present as a wit- 
ness to a retraction. The business concluded, Tilton picked 
up the copy of the Tribune which contained Dr. Bacon's ad- 
dress, delivered at New Haven the day bef >re. Tilton turned 
to Belcher and said: "Now that we are here together, I desire 
to call your attention to a paragraph in which Dr. Bacon 
speaks of you as one of the most magnanimous of men, and 
characterizes me as a dog, who is the creature of your mag- 



APPOINTMENT OF THE COMMITTEE. 207 

nanimity. As yon know you are the creature of my magnani- 
mity, it "is but right that Dr. Bacon should be disabused on 
this point." Shearman was the only one of that party of four 
that was in any way dismayed. He had from the beginning 
pushed himself to the front. This may account for Lawyer 
Shearman's desire for the bracing air of the Berkshire moun- 
tains. Mr. Beecher crossed his hands and remained silent. 
Tilton, seeing that there was to be no response, said: " As you 
are undecided what course to pursue, I will take the initiative, 
and will forward to Dr. Bacon a letter that he can transmit to 
you for an answer. He has been the Moderator of the Coun- 
cil, and necessarily becomes the historian of the matter. I 
cannot afford to stand on the record as a creature of your mag- 
nanimity." The letter was written, sent to thereverened gen- 
tleman, and by him forwarded to Mr. Beecher, and, like the 
Rev. Dr. Storrs' letter of condolence and sympathy, remains 
to the present time unanswered. Then followed Tilton's let- 
ter to Bacon, in which he mentioned an offense which he would 
not characterize. It is believed that it was this allegation 
that caused the leaders of Plymouth Church to advise their 
pastor that he could not longer maintain silence, whereupon 
Mr. Beecher named his court, and asked the members to do 
that which truth and justice may require, and desired that 
they satisfy themselves by an impartial and thorough examina- 
tion of all sources of evidence, and to communicate to the ex- 
amining committee, or to the church, such action as may then 
seem to them right and wise. 

Why did Mrs. Tilton go before the committee? She never 
went before the committee. It was from a lady friend she 
first heard of the investigating committee. She sent for Mr. 
Beecher to meet her at the house of her friend, Mrs. Ovington. 
Mr. Beecher sent her word that it would not be policy for 
him to see her at that stage of affairs, but in his place came 
his lawyer. I do not know who that was, but if it was Shear- 
man, and he has been the marplot in this affair, it can be 
readily understood that a man who was a match for the 
adventuress Mansfield in her legal tilts with Fisk, would be 
equal to the pettifogging required to manage a poor wife only 
too eager to screen her pastor, and save her husband and 
children from disgrace. AVhile the lawyer was preparing her 
testimony, he found her in such a pliable mood that he deemed 
it best that her testimony should be immediately taken. 
Accordingly, he went in hot haste to the residence of one of 



20S INTER VIEWERS RA VENO US. 

the members, where the committee was in session, and informed 
them of the situation of affairs, whereupon there was an abrupt 
termination of their deliberations. The gentlemen hurried to 
the hat stand, grasped their hats and canes in confusion and in 
a body quickly repaired to the residence where Mrs. Tilton 
was sojourning. There, she, unknown to her husband, 
exonerated her pastor from the charges with which her 
liame had been connected. On the tenth, Tilton was sent 
for by the committee. He was not then aware that it was a 
court appointed by Mr. Beecher. His suspicions were aroused, 
and it made him wary. There was legal counsel and a 
stenographer. That night, when he returned to his home, he 
learned for the first time, from his own wife, that it was a 
church court, and that she had given them her statement. 
Up to this moment Tilton had been on the defensive. He 
had merely explained his reason for writing to Dr. Bacon, but 
now that the gauntlet had been thrown down, he braced him- 
self. His agonized wife saw the impending doom, and unmind- 
ful of the fact that he possessed all the proofs that would have 
palliated a tragedy, she fled from the house, abandoning her 
husband and children, and took refuge with Mr. Beecher's 
friends. 

The statement? I have not seen its contents, nor has any 
one but his counsel. He requires no corroborative testimony, 
nor the assistance of a stenographer, and had called no wit- 
nesses. There is no longer any necessity for innuendoes. He 
expects no consideration from the New York or Brooklyn 
press. He realizes the fact that the odds are terribly against 
him, but says it is a day of battle and death; in fact, that he 
stands alone, unpitied and despised for having so long borne 
his cross, and now placed in a position by the refusal of others 
to protect him from further calumny, when he is forced to 
answer the demands, that the essential truth and the whole of 
it shall be made known. He feels keenly the bitter flings of 
the Brooklyn Eagle. Interviewers have besieged his house, 
(and you know how ravenous and merciless they can be in a 
hunt), night and day. 

Those that have spoken with him have put flabby words in 
his mouth that he never uttered. They have described him 
as jolly, when he was but bland. One racy interviewer, 
described him as '''having a merry twinkle in his eye," which 
when he saw in print, he remarked, in an agonizing voice, 
" Great Heavens! what is there now in my life to come that 



WAIT AND SEE. 209 

will excite an expression of merriment in my eye or any feature 
of my face ! " 

How does he stand it? That I cannot tell. You see that 
he does ; but that benign expression so natural to his face is 
gone. Marius amid the ruins was not more desolate and 
alone than is Tilton to-day in his cozy vine-clad cottage. That 
he is almost friendless is beyond all doubt, from the fact that, 
of all the dear mutual friends, not one but counseled from the 
beginning that he should continue to carry his burden. The 
precipice from which he is now hanging is one over which 
many a man has stumbled before ; but the creepers that en- 
tangled his feet are of his own planting. He has fastened his 
death grip to the High Priest, and intends to fall not alone. 

Have I mingled in the contest ? Oh, no. I am not an 
" eminent respectable," and not a mutual friend. I was only 
a skirmisher. I was not a match for Moulton's sophistical 
diplomacy or Frank Carpenter's angelic sweetness. I have 
warned them time and time again of the danger of trifling. I 
have crossed bayonets with the terrible ogress Woodhull many a 
time. When Osborne, Comstonk, and many otl.e s, in their 
honest indignation entangled her in the meshes uf the law, I 
begged and beseeched those who could have done so to open 
her prison door. In her calmer moments she had shown me the 
letters that she had threatened to publish. When I saw whom 
she had fraternized with, and the hearts she could lacerate ; 
when I saw that hers was the terrible fury of jealousy, I im- 
plored that she could not have the opportunity of doing any 
more mischief. I encountered nothing but moral cowards. 
Turn where I would, I met obstacles. Quibbling was then, as 
it is now, the rule, not the exception, and I gave up in despair, 
and the canker continued its gnawing. One ounce of honesty 
and manliness would have averted the coming storm, but it 
was not to be. If the fate that awaits those who desecrated the 
sanctity of domestic peace, will make odious the theories and 
sophistries of those who would emancipate husband and wife, 
the lesson will not be lost. 

Is no compromise possible ? About as possible as floating 
up Niagara rapids on a crowbar. 

What next ? It's hard to tell what the week may bring 
forth. Should a crowner's quest be the last act in the drama, 
it would not be surprising. I cannot see that Tilton has much 
to live for. He is as freakish as a woman, and has always 
courted martyrdom of some kind. Wait and see. All the 



210 THE KINO CAN DO NO WRONG. 

clamor is but idle words. Mr. Beeclier's battle is many an- 
other man's fight. There be editors who, while they would not 
add a pang to the misery of a brother journalist by any act of 
theirs, will permit some mangy cur who has returned to his 
vomit to do the work. 

Will the statement be given to the press? I don't know. 
It will in time. Its immediate appearance depends entirely on 
the action of the committee. Yes, a seat around that commit- 
tee table last evening would have been heaven to a scribe; but 
there was no leak there, that I can assure you. It was not a 
court of Tilton's choosing, nor a council of churches. It was 
Mr. Beeclier's tribunal, composed of members of Plymouth 
Church, and never was the power of a king more absolute than 
is Mr. Beeclier's over his congregation; and " The King can 
do no wrong." 



CHAPTER IX. 

A VISIT TO THE CLAFLItf SISTERS' BACKING OFFICE — A RUN- 
NING COMMENTARY UPON THEODORE TILTON, WHO LOVES 
SCOTCH ALE AS HE ONCE LOVED THE MODERN DEMOSTHENES 
— A SPICY INTERVIEW WITH THE WOODHULL — HER 
RELATIONS TO TILTON AND BEECHER EXPLAINED — 
"THEODORE WAS MY DEVOTED LOVER." 

In the same letter of the gossiping correspondent who, in 
the preceding chapter, describes Beecher's career at Lawrence- 
burg, is given some interesting facts regarding the great actors 
in this scandal, and interviews with them that certainly throws 
valuable light upon the relations existing between these free- 
lovers of Plymouth and New York. The writer says : 

During 1872 I was a resident of New York city, and inex- 
tricably entangled in the swirl of national politics. Required 
to be at Greeley headquarters much of the time, I formed there 
the acquaintance of many persons of note and celebrity. By 
the 17th of June three presidential candidates were already in 
the field — Horace Greeley, General Grant, and Victoria 0. 
Woodhull. On a warm June afternoon, when I had elbowed 
my way on the east side of crooked Nassau street from the 
Tribune office to Wall street, and failed to find my friend in, 
at Jay Cooke's, in sheer adventure I concluded to call on the 
most notorious adventuress of our country, Victoria 0. Wood- 
hull, at her broker's office, 48 Broad street, a block south of 
Wall. No. 48 was easily reached, after a brisk and dangerous 
walk past the Stock Exchange and through the throngs of bel- 
lowing bulls ^nd roaring bears, and I tripped up three or four 
steps to the "parlor" office floor and entered the door of the 

211 



212 POLITICS AND SOCIAL LIFE. 

front office. Handing Miss Tennie C. Claflin my card, she 
beamed upon me one of her witching smiles (the kind that 
wilted poor Challis, I presume), and lispe^d to me: 

"Won't you pleathe be theated, thir, here on the thofabethide 
me?" 

Of course I would. I would not be so ungallant as to de- 
cline to "thit" down by so beaming and buxom a beauty as 
Miss Tennie, when so cordially invited. While I sat, Miss 
Tennie was frequently called to the telegraphic stock-and-gold- 
board register tick-tick-tick-a-ticking away at a great rate at 
the end of the apartment next the street. During her brief 
absence I stole a glance over the luxurious rooms of the Wood- 
hull & Claflin brokers. They have time and again been 
described to you — I only need mention that Col. Blood sat at 
his desk in front; rich carpetry, and upholstery, and pictures 
furnished the apartment, which was spacious; and some thirty 
feet from the front, a high and richly carved walnut partition, 
crowned with ornamented glass, separated the public from the 
rear private office. Tennie fluently inflicted me for an hour, 
when I inquired for her more famous sister, Victoria. " Oh, 
yeth, of courth, you mutlifc the thisther, Vic," prattled fat and 
sprightly Tennie; and she bounded within the private office 
with my card. Returning, she seated herself familiarly and in 
close proximity to your correspondent, and on went the chat 
till a voice came from an opened slat or " port-hole " in that 
glass, calling "Tennie!" She responded, and immediately 
conducted me face to face with Victoria Woodhull. My first 
impressions of her were agreeable. There was a bright, intel- 
ligent face, lit up by two soft, dark-blue or changeable eyes. 
She smiled sweetly, and greeted me in tones tender and plain- 
tive as a flute. She was stylishly attired, and at that moment 
was partaking of a dish of iuscious berries, a generous quantity 
of which had been sent in to the "sisters " by some anonymous 
millionaire (probably old Vanderbilt), and I was pressed to 
join in the refreshment while we chatted familiarly on politics, 
social life, her prospects for the presidency, &c. She remarked, 
in her animated way, that she would receive a million votes. 
"You look incredulous!" she went on to observe, "and I do 
not wonder, for it takes money to conduct a great campaign, 
and of that we shall have abundant supplies. Look here ! " 
she exclaimed, as she drew forth what I at first mistook for a 
U. S. bond. " Here," she continued, " here is a bond we are 
issuing, and upon which we shall raise $200,000, or twice or 



BETWEEN THE SHERRY AND CHAMPAGNE. 213 

thrice that sum if needed." Then, with, a fascinating smile 
and a pensive and tender glance from her mellow eyes, she 
softly and confidingly whispered : "The next time you call 
you shall have one of these bonds. They draw 7 per cent, 
interest." I gracefully bowed my blushing thanks, and soon 
took my leave. I did not meet her again during the summer. 

At Glenham hotel headquarters I frequently met Theodore 
Tilton. Our acquaintance sprang up informally, and pro- 
gressed similarly. Millions of our countrymen have seen 
Theodore, yet to gratify those of you readers who have not, I 
may observe that he is tall, well-built, and large-boned man, 
with just the least perception of a stoop, and physically a suc- 
cess. His face is a study — a luxury — the essence of intellect 
and intelligence. It is not large below the forehead. Togeth- 
er, they present a handsome, pleasing irresistible contour. I 
do not wonder that feminine hearts swell and break beneath 
his beaming countenance. His smile is as witching as a wom- 
an's and his laugh hearty and sympathetic. What distin- 
guishes him in general appearance is a wealth of blonde hair 
hanging in clustering profusion over his shoulders. Now, he 
is not far from 40 years of age, and in the prime of intellectual 
and physical vigor. I do not know that I ever had a talk with 
Tilton "between the sherry and champagne" a la Watterson, 
but I recollect a very entertaining lunch we had together one 
morning, when I was charmed with his sparkling conversation 
between the Scotch ale and the oysters. Tilton is a strictly 
temperate man, but not a teetotaler. Greeley had an abiding 
love for his " boy Theodore," as he often spoke of him. When 
Greeley went to Boston, July 4th, 1872, Tilton accompanied 
the party. At midnight's calm and holy hour on that night, 
long after Greeley was in his state-room and asleep, the press 
demons proceeded to explore the nether depths of the ill-fated 
Sound Steamer Metis, in search of the bar. Somewhat to our 
surprise we stumbled on to Brother Tilton and another gentle- 
man interviewing a bottle of Scotch ale for a "night-cap." 
He is neither improved with or depressed wi thou t his occasion- 
al glass of ale. A shadow seemed hovering over Tilton, not- 
withstanding his effervescing and grandly recuperative nature. 
When the campaign closed disastrously (he strongly supported 
Greeley), Theodore Tilton was a sorrowful man. Other afflic- 
tions than political defeat weighed upon his heart. There was 
an impending doom. I did not meet him again for weeks. 

During the summer Mrs. Woodhull had left the city. Late 



214: AN INTER VIEW. 

in the autumn she returned, and the broker firm of Woodhull 
& Claflin opened out again in full blast. Their appearance 
among the infuriated bulls and bears of Broad street always 
produced a sensation; but no sensation did they ever produce 
equal that of the publication in Woodhull & Claflirfs Weekly 
of the Beecher-Tilton scandal. Such a feeling of general dis- 
trust of the Claflin sisters prevailed that the public did not ac- 
cept the astounding revelation therein made as the genuine 
article. How many hundred thousand copies of their Weekly 
were sold before the frail sisters were enjoying the hospitality 
of Ludlow street jail, I never could ascertain. Out of curios- 
ity, on the evening of the day before their arrest, accompanied 
by a New York journalist, I crowded my way through the 
army of newsboys and newsdealers wishing to leaving orders 
which actually blocked up Broad street for hundreds of feet, 
and appeared in the presence of Victoria and Tennie at their 
old quarters, No. 48 Broad street. Hundreds of dollars per 
hour were flowing into their coffers. The conspirators were 
jubilant — the terrible expose had gone off like buttered hot 
cakes. I was cordially pressed to call at their dwelling in 
Fourth avenue, with my friend, that evening. We did so. 
We found it a first-class, English basement, four-story private 
house, well-furnished. 

The reception was cordial and generously warm. We were 
ushered into a spacious parlor, at the further end of which 
long flowing lace curtains, gently drawn apart, half-disguised 
and half-disclosed a magnificent mahogany bedstead — the chief 
article of furniture in Tennie's perfumed boudoir. A grand 
piano occupied a place in the rear division of the parlor. Mrs. 
Woodhull, a married sister, and Tennie were the adult persons 
present, while the occasion was graced by the presence of two 
nieces of Mrs. W. and her own young daughter, the nieces be- 
ing fifteen and twelve respectively, and the daughter about a 
dozen summers. Miss Woodhull was shy and reserved; but 
the two young misses, the nieces, entered upon the programme 
of receiving and entertaining us with a nonchalance as refresh- 
ing as a midsummer shower. The elder of the nieces was then 
on the boards in minor parts with Daly's company at the Fifth 
Avenue Theatre and she could sing ballads very attractively. 
She indicated, in her playing, singing, and recitations that 
evening, some degree of histrionic talent. During a lull in 
the general, ecstatic, jubilant joy which pervaded, and on that 
occasion spontaneously exploded from the members of that 



I WILL AT LEAST BE FRANK. 215 

family, Mrs. Woodhull and I happened to be alone in an ad- 
joining reception room. Without preliminaries, I opened a 
conversation with her concerning the terrible expositions of 
her Beecher-Tilton scandal article, at that hour convulsing the 
social life of two great cities. 

Igiveyonthe interview substantially as it occurred, from 
notes recorded at the time: 

Correspondent — Mrs. Woodhull, does our friendship entitle 
me to ask you confidentially for details of a private matter? 

Mrs. Woodhull — Perhaps so. Proceed, You know me well 
enough to know that I will at least be frank. 

Cor. Of course I do, madam. I have had proof positive of 
that. Well, then, what I wished to inquire about is, How 
much truth, actual fact, is there in the publication about 
Beecher and Mrs. Til ton, and her husband, Theodore Tilton, 
in this last issue of your Weekly? 

Mrs. W. — My dear sir, it is every word of it true. Why, I 
know directly from the principal parties themselves that the 
greater share of it is actual fact. I have had peculiar and ex- 
traordinary proofs of its accuracy. Perhaps some of the mi- 
nor details, as to dates and incidents, may be at fault, but the 
full sweep of the expose, in all its enormity (from the popular 
conventional stand-point), it is a bare statement of a fact. 
You see we do not allude to it to denounce it, but to show that 
the sectarian or Christian world lives the principles we advo- 
cate while denouncing ws for their advocacy. 

Cor. — You know personally both Mr. Tilton and Mr. Beech- 
er, of course. I should suppose your opportunities for know- 
ing the facts were superior. 

Mrs. W. — Certainly they were. I ought to know Mr. Tilton, 
for he was my devoted lover for more than half a year, and I 
admit that during that time he was my accepted lover. A wo- 
man who could not love Theodore Tilton, especially in recip- 
rocation of a generous, impulsive, overwhelming affection such 
as he is capable of bestowing, must be indeed dead to all the 
sweeter impulses of our nature. / could not resist his inspir- 
ing fascination. 

Cor. — Do I understand, my dear madam, that the fascination 
was mutual and irresistible? 

Mrs. W. — You will think so when I tell you that so enam- 
ored and infatuated with each other were we that for three 
months we were hardly out of each other's sight, and that dur- 
ing that time he rarely left my house day or night. Pardon 



216 BEECUERS ESPECIAL FRIENDSHIP. 

me for the statement, but you sincerely seek truth, and you shall 
have it first-handed ***** Theodore 
was then estranged from his wife, and undergoing all the agonies 
of tlhe torture inflicted tqjo?i him by the treachery of his friend 
Mr. Beecher. 

Cor. — Pardon me, out x presume mat it was under such cir- 
cumstances and during this intimacy that Mr. Tilton unlocked 
the secrets and griefs of his breast to you ? 

Mrs. W. — Yes, sir, we were very naturally mutually con- 
fiding. And it was during this time he so eloquently wrote 
of me, in the little brochure of a biography from his pen. 

Cor. — You speak of Mr. Til ton's sorrow over his friend 
Beecher's treachery. You refer, I presume to the alleged 
seduction of Mrs. Tilton by Henry Ward Beecher. 

Mrs. W. — Yes, sir, as we have stated it in the Weekly, giving 
the true relations existing at one time between Beecher and 
Mrs. Tilton. You observed we did not blame either. To do 
so would be inconsistent. 

Cor. — So I understand that Mr. Tilton gave you an insight 
into his trouble directly from his own lips ? 

Mrs. W. — As sure as God rules the spheres he did. He con- 
fided in me and won my entire sympathy, and I tried to solace 
him by pointing out to him that our teachings in the Weekly 
and our lectures were natural and not abnormal, as shown in 
his own family and that of Henry Ward Beecher. * 

Cor. — Did I understand you to say, Mrs. Woodhull, that you 
were personally acquainted with Mr. Beecher ? 

Mrs. W. — Oh, yes, sir, I know Mr. Beecher very well. 

Cor. — Permit me to ask if Mr. Beecher ever exhibited to- 
ward you his especial friendship in any unmistakeable man- 
ner. I have a particular reason for making this inquiry ? 

Mrs. W. — Indeed he has. His private carriage could have 
been seen waiting before our door every afternoon for many 
months, to take us riding to Central Park. You would, per- 
haps, call that some indication or evidence of personal friend- 
ship. 

Cor. — Yes, madam, I would most unquestionably consider it 
a very practical proof of regard, if in my own case. I presume 
all this occurred months ago ? 

Mrs. W. — Yes, months ago — before Mr. Beecher discovered 
that the Argus eyes of the world had detected him practicing 
one system and preaching another. Compelled to choose, he 
preferred to be open in his preaching, and, I presume, to cloak 
his practices. It pays better, you see. 






A SCORE OF LETTERS. 217 

Cor. — I will not ask you, Mrs. Woodhull, if your intimacy 
with Mr. Beecher extended beyond the carriage rides. 

Mrs. W. — I leave you to your own inferences ; but must not 
be understood as suggesting that Mr. Beecher and Mr. Tilton 
ever occupied precisely similar personal relations toward my- 
self. I never loved Mr. Beecher. 

Cor. — Now that you have permitted (in your expose in your 
Weekly) the feline quadruped to escape from the amorous bag, 
what results other than your immense sales of The Weekly are 
visible ? 

Mrs. W. — " Well, my friena, please look here, [showing me 
a score or more of freshly arrived letters]. This is my mail 
this evening. Nearly every letter conveys some point of posi- 
tive proof to sustain our expose. Here is a letter [reading] from 
an eminent lawyer in Brooklyn. See what he writes. He says 
that in his professional capacity he has come into possession of 
much evidence not only similar to what we publish but in 
direct support of it. He says scores of such cases exist in 
Brooklyn and New York churches — that prominent lawyers 
make fortunes, not by practicing law, but by suppressing scan- 
dals. He is familiar with Plymouth church congregation and 
a regular attendant on Beecher's preaching, and affirms that it 
has become a kind of playful gossip among the outsiders who 
merely look on the play, as to ivliich one of Mr. Beecher's score 
of female lovers in his flock (dames and virgins) is, at the time, 
basking in his smile. 

Cor. — You suggest this condition of things in your expose, I 
believe ? 

Mrs. W. — Yes, for we are sure that it is so. I wish the parties 
to this particular infraction (so-called) of the seventh com- 
mandment would dare investigate. The truth would be laid 
bare and society elevated. 

Cor.— Will your publication not precipitate a complete and 
formal explosion of this fermenting mass of hypocrisy and 
corruption ? 

Mrs. W. — Ah, sir, I fear not. I know there is a covenanted 
bond — a league of silence. But we shall see how long before it 
will be broken. 

At that moment of our somewhat explicit interview, Tennie 
came dashing into our presence with: — 

" Thister Vic., have you tholen of th here by yourthelfths for 
the whole evening ?" 

Then we returned to the parlor; and soon my friends and I 
10 



218 WENT TO CHAPPAQUA. 

put on onr furs and took a stage for down town. Twenty-four 
hours thereafter the sisters were in Ludlow street Jail. During 
their incarceration there, in company with my demon of the 
press, I frequently looked in upon them, and marveled at these 
curious characters midst their ringing laughter and their tears. 
Mrs. Woodhull's calm and sympathetic eyes, her tender and 
motherly voice, and her chaste manners indicated to me that 
she is, whatever else may be said, a truthful woman. 

On a chill December day, long after the campaign was over 
and poor Greeley and the wife of his bosom were laid away un- 
der the sod in Greenwood, I had occasion to comply with a 
standing, written, invitation to call and see Theodore Tilton at 
his cottage home, 174 Livingston street, just off Fulton avenue, 
Brooklyn. I found No. 171 to be a neat but unpretentious 
wooden cottage, with an unusually wide front, two stories high, 
and suggesting comfort and a good degree of elegance. My 
ring at the door-bell was answered by a female servant with a 
hideous face. In view of all that had fallen on my ear, invol- 
untarily the wicked thought came, somehow, coupling Mrs. 
Tilton's domestic diplomacy with that repulsive countenance. 
Whether Theodore could find occasion to exercise equal de- 
fensive powers as against his better half, I did not know. Ad- 
mitted to the sitting-room, adjoining the parlor and at the rear 
of the hall, I found the handsome hero of the greatest scandal 
of our time, slippered and gowned and lazily lounging on a sofa 
before a cosy grate fire. He accosted me cordially and famili- 
arly, and smilingly pointed to a chair near him, saying: — 
" Pardon my laziness. I am fatigued by overwork and came 
home early to lounge about in this free and easy manner. 

Business soon dispatched, our conversation drifted to Greeley, 
and his wife, and concomitant matters. He gave a ludicrous 
description of his first acquaintance with Mrs. Greeley ; how 
he went to Chappaquato fill a lecture engagement made for an- 
other; how he pleased Mrs. Greeley so well that ever after until 
death she was one of his warmest friends. 

As Theodore Tilton lay stretched on his sofa, I sat fronting 
his face. Lifting my eyes above his grand, poetic head, I could 
not avoid perceiving an exquisite portrait on canvas, gracing 
the wall. Again and again my eyes fell upon it. Something 
peculiarly charming, and fascinating, and tender hung about 
it. Musingly I thought the artist was himself a most imagin- 
ative genius and consummate creator, or, if an actual instead 
of fancy subject, his brush must have been inspired. A most 



PORTRAIT OF MRS. TILTON. 219 

symmetrical head, intellect and poetry predominating ; a wealth. 
of silken brown hair ; soft and soulful eyes of richest hazel ; a 
face of exquisite sweetness and tenderness, and ripe with culture 
and character; a mouth carved by the gods, and lips full, 
warm, and suggesting robustness of modest passion ; a chin in- 
dicating a gentle firmness and abundant will ; a shapely neck 
and graceful shoulders, and a finely developed bust — all har- 
mony, all beauty, all the vigor and tenderness of young life and 
fascination. The witching eyes seemed to brighten when 
looked into ; a very smile so sweet as to thrill me appeared upon 
that face when I involuntarily fixed my gaze upon it. Con- 
templating that portrait, so strange a feeling came over me that 
I heedlessly trespassed on propriety, and before I was aware of 
it I said to Mr. Tilton : 

"What a charming painting you have above your head." 

He turned, and looked up with a tender smile. " Why," 
said he, '• that is a portrait of Mrs. Tilton. Wait a moment, I 
will call her. I desire that you shall meet her." 

And Mr. Tilton briskly passed to an adjoining room, whence, 
shortly thereafter, he returned, bringing on his arm the original 
of the portrait on the wall. 

Mrs. Tilton is of medium height, perfectly, voluptuously de- 
veloped, modest, not very vivacious, with beautiful eyes, and a 
soft, charming voice. She is in the prime of life, enjoys good 
health (at least looked as though she did) and her manners are 
most winning. My visit to Mr. Tilton's was not prolonged. 

The world has learned to bear no malice toward Mark An- 
thony for his fall before Cleopatra. Some time it may be 
equally generous with Beecher's fall before lovely Mrs. Tilton. 



CHAPTEK X. 

OF WOODHULL WITH CUTTING COMMENTS BY 
A FRIEND OF H. W. BEECHER. — THE FASCINATION UNDER 
WHICH TILTON WROTE IT. — THE PRIESTESS OF FREE LOVE 
AND UNLIMITED AFFECTION AND THE VARYING PHASES OF 
HER PHANTASMAGORIC CAREER FONDLY PHOTOGRAPHED. — 
HOW SHE BURST THE FETTERS OF MATRIMONY AND FLED 
TO HER AFFINITY. — MRS. WOODHULL ON THE HOUSETOP 
COMMUNING WITH DEMOSTHENES. — HER REVELATIONS TO 
THEODORE. — MRS. WOODHULL RETURNS FROM THE WEST 
TO AID IN VINDICATING THEODORE. — AN INTERESTING 
INTERVIEW WITH HER. — SHE DENIES THAT MR. TILTON HELD 
CRIMINAL RELATIONS TO HER. — SHE AVERS THAT SHE FIRST 
LEARNED OF THE LIAISON BETWEEN MRS. TILTON AND MR. 
BEECHER FROM THE PASTOR'S SISTER AND ELIZABETH CADY 
STANTON. 

~"\T~0 history of this great subject of anxiety and conversa- 
-*~^ tion would be complete without giving the reader some pas- 
sages from the biography of Mrs. Wood bull, written by 
Theodore Tilton at a period when it is alleged he was under 
her fascinating spell. This biography, that so shocked some 
of the friends of Mr. Tilton was published as a, Golden Age 
Tract, and bore as a motto : " He that uttereth a slander is a 
fool." Proverbs x, 18. The Brooklyn Eagle, which during 
the popular clamor for an investigation, very strongly sided 
with the Pastor of Plymouth Church, in republishing extracts 
from Theodore's tribute to Victoria thus comments introduc- 
torily and severely. " Mr. Theodore Tilton, when in the first 
throes of that anguish which has lately found frequent if vague 
expression in letters and protests, turned to Mrs. Victoria 0. 
Woodhull for comfort and moral support. The virtuous cur- 
rent of his life had been interrupted. The ascetic purity of 

220 




VICTORIA C. WOODHULL. 



HOW LIKE A SPIDER. 221 

his soul had been disturbed, and for the first time in his 
life he found himself face to face with moral enormities of 
the existence of which he had scarcely been aware. He says, 
just at present, that his home has been shaken to its modest 
foundations by the act or word of Henry Ward Beecher. Of 
t ; ie dimensions and of the significance of that act or word Mr. 
Tilton has vouchsafed, so far, to say nothing exact or precise. 
We are forced to believe that the shock was so desperate, so 
tremendous, that in his agonized recoil from its contemplation, 
he fell into the siren's clutch of Mrs. Woodhull. How grimly 
that arch priestess of Priapus held on to Tilton's streaming 
coat tails, he has himself testified as few men of moderate com- 
mon sense would like to bear witness. " The wife of his 
bosom had been insulted," The sanctuary of his home had 
been invaded by "an improper proposal." His belief in the 
flowery code of ethics which he himself received one hundred 
dollars a night for rehearsing about the country, had been 
shaken. What so natural, because so paradoxical, as the 
recourse of his original resentment to the oracle of Broad 
Street — to the woman whose Satanic embassy was precisely 
th* description and extraction of those very social and 
marital relations, the menacing of whose stability in Tilton's 
own case by Beecher, was the mainspring and private cause of 
Tilton's despair? The proposition is simple enough in all 
conscience. Tilton loved his wife, and cherished his domestic 
purity with an enthusiasm almost frantic. Beecher's incon- 
siderate act revealed to him possibilities of injury and destruc- 
tion to that domestic religion, which his own crystal integrity 
had never suspected. Naturally, in his tearful perplexity, he 
hied to the sorceress who trafficked in lusts and adulteries, and 
who, from a negative sort of personal experience, knew more 
— and less — about the inviolability of marriage than any other 
counsel >r to whom he ould apply. Mrs. Woodhull had been 
fishing for souls for some time in Broad Street. She had 
landed half a dozen meagre spirits of the stockbroker set, but 
these had slipped out of her hands, and left no good behind. 
When Tilton blundered into the meshes of her net, we can 
conceive how, like a spider, she clasped the bleating victim to 
her ruthless breast. Here, at all events, was a good catch, 
plump and succulent because full of vanity and a rich store of 
maudlin sentimentality. Therefore she made up her mind 
that this, her latest gudgeon, should distil a nourishment of 
which, just at this crisis, she stood in sore need. The Tiltonian 



222 POL YANDUO US NYMPH. 

chastity which had shrunk in horror from confronting the 
spectral possibilities evoked by Mr. Beecher's alleged proposal 
to Mrs. Tilton, was dazzled and blinded by the moral effulgence 
of Mrs. Woodhull. Hovering on the edge of her fascination, 
at first, Tilton was finally engulfed, and three months of the 
time he devoted to purging his sensitive honor, were spent in 
the closest and nearest intimacy with the polyandrous nymph 
of Broad Street. In brief, if the word of that notorious drab 
be worth the credit which Tilton, himself, over his own signa- 
ture, attaches to it, Tilton conceived the project of re-consecrat- 
ing his home and re-establishing its purity, in the adulterous 
arms of his mistress! In exchange for the sympathy and the 
comfort of that woman, he devoted his remarkable genius to 
the creation of a monument for her. At her feet he laid a 
votive biography, penned at intervals during the preparation 
of his remedy for the wrongs which Mr. Beecher, as he com- 
plains, had perpetrated upon his honor. That biography was 
regarded at the time of its original publication with only the 
moderate interest which attaches itself to the irrational and 
inexplicable freak of some madman. But in view of the light 
it throws both on Tilton's mental condition and in his painfully 
acute moral sensibility, the Eagle devotes some space to that 
wonderful literary work/' 

Tilton opens his remarkable biography thus: — 
" I shall swiftly sketch the life of Victoria Olaflin Woodhull ; a 
young woman whose career has been as singular as any heroine's 
in a romance ; whose ability is of a rare and whose character 
of the rarest type ; whose personal sufferings are of themselves 
a whole drama of pathos ; whose name (through the malice 
of some and the ignorance of others) has caught a shadow in 
strange contrast with the whiteness of her life ; whose position 
as a representative of her sex in the greatest reform of modern 
times renders her an object of peculiar interest to her fellow 
citizens; and whose character (inasmuch as I know her well) I 
can portray without color or tinge from any other partiality 
save that I hold her in uncommon respect. 

" In Homer, Ohio, in a small cottage, white painted and high 
peaked, with a porch running around it and a flower garden in 
front, this daughter, the seventh of ten children of Roxana 
andBuckman Olaflin, was born September 23d, 1838. As this 
was the year when Queen Victoria was crowned, the new born 
babe, though chid neither in purple nor fine linen, but com- 
fortably swaddled in respectable poverty, was immediately 



WOODHULL'S BIOGRAPHY. 223 

christened (though without chrism), as the Queen's namesake; 
her parents littli dreaming that their daughter would one day 
aspire to a higher seat than the English throne. The Queen 
with that early matronly predilection which her subsequent 
life did so much to illustrate, foresaw that many glad mothers 
who were to bring babes into the world during that coronation 
year, would name them after the chief lady of the earth ; and 
accordingly she ordained a gift to all her little namesakes of 
Anno Domino 1838. As Victoria Olanin was one of these, she 
has lately been urged to make a trip to Windsor Castle, to see 
the illustrious giver of these gifts, and to receive the special 
souvenir which the Queen's bounty is supposed to hold still in 
store for the Ohio babe that uttered its first cry as if to say, 
" Long live the Queen ! " Mrs. Woodhull, who is now a candi- 
date for the Presidency of the United States, should defer this 
visit till after her election, when she will have a beautiful 
opportunity to invite her elder sister in sovereignty — the 
mother of our mother country — to visit her fairest daughter, 
the Eepublic of the West. 

[The elasticity of a mind which condescends from schemes 
of moral crucifixion to state that "Victoria Claflin has lately 
been urged to make a trip to Windsor Castle to see the illustri- 
ous giver of these gifts," and come back with a present from 
the Queen, reminds one of the elephant's trunk, capable both 
of tearing up a tree or picking a pocket. We are rather at a 
loss to comprehend how the babe of such promise was christ- 
ened "without chrism." The performance of such a feat 
must have been something remarkable, or Mr. Tilton would 
surely never have embalmed mention of the fact in a parenthe- 
sis. "Her eldest sister in sovereignty" is a very picturesque 
sentence. Its only fault is that, on being analyzed, it doesn't 
yield much meaning as a result. It looks very much as if that 
and the succeeding phrases were gauzy and prismatic, if very 
unsubstantial, devices of the Tiltonian genius, to fill out a 
paragraph But let us proceed.] — Eagle Critic. 

"It is pitiful to be a child without a childhood. Such was 
she. Not a sunbeam gilded the morning of her life, her 
girlish career was a continuous bitterness — an unbroken heart 
break. She was worked like a slave — whipped like a convict. 
Her father was impartial in his cruelty to all his children; 



224 CHILD WITHOUT A CHILDHOOD. 

her mother, with a fickleness of spirit that renders her one of 
the most erratic of mortals, sometimes abetted him in his 
scourgings; and at other times shielded the little ones from 
his blows, In a barrel of rain water he kept a number of 
braided green withes made of willow or walnut twigs, and with 
these stinging weapons, never with any ordinary whip, he 
would cut the quivering flesh of the children till their tears 
and blood melted him into mercy. Sometimes he took a hand- 
saw or a stick of firewood as the instrument of his savagery. 
Coming home after the children were in bed, on learning of 
some offense which they had committed, he has been known 
to waken them out of sleep, and whip them until morning. 
In consequence of these brutalities one of the sons, in his 
thirteenth year, burst away from home, went to sea, and still 
bears a shattered constitution the damning memorial of his 
father's wrath. " I have no remembrance of a father's kiss," 
says Victoria. Her mother has on occasions tormented and 
harried her children until they would be thrown into spasms, 
whereat she would hysterically laugh, clap her hands, and 
look as fiercely delighted as a cat in playing with a mouse. 
At other times, her tenderness towards her offspring would 
appear almost angelic. She would fondle them, weep over 
them, lift her arms and thank God for such children, caress 
them with ecstatic joy, and then smite them as if seeking to 
destroy at a blow both body and soul. This eccentric old lady, 
compounded in equal parts of heaven and hell, will pray till 
her eyes are full of tears, and in the same hour curse till her 
lips are white with foam. The father exhibits a more tranquil 
bitterness, with fewer spasms. These parental peculiarities 
were lately made witnesses against their possessors in a court 
of justice. " 

[It is hard to explain Mr. Tilton's evidently accurate 
acquaintance with the castigatory apparatus of the Claflin fam- 
ily. " The barrel of rain water" in which Claflin pere, kept his 
" braided green withes made of willow or walnut twigs," is so 
vividly projected on our retina, that a sharp and sympathetic 
spasm responds, in divers portions of our anatomy, to the lurid 
description. "A handsaw or a stick of firewood" were occa- 
sionally substituted for " the braided green withes." No won- 
der that with the alternation of such regulative implements in 
la famille Claflin, one of the sons "burst away from home." 



HER PARENTS. 225 

The only marvel is that the rest of the children didn't indulge 
in a like domestic explosion. " I have no remembrance of a 
father's kiss," says Victoria, to whom the fates afterward seemed 
to have allowed huge osculatory compensation. The portrait 
of old Mrs. Claflin "hysterically laughing," clapping her hands 
and looking as fiercely as a " cat playing with a mouse," is the 
work of a master hand. Nobody other than Tilton could 
have done so much with so little. Nor could anybody else 
have described the vigorous spanking powers of the old lady 
so neatly and so graphically. — Eagle Critic] 

If I must account for what seems unaccountable, I may say 
that with these parents, these traits are not only constitutional 
but have been further developed by circumstances. The mo- 
ther, who has never in her life learned to read, was during her 
maidenhood the petted heiress of one of the richest German 
families of Pennsylvania, and was brought up not to serve but 
to be served, until in her ignorance and vanity she fancied all 
things her own, and all people her ministers. The father, 
partly bred to the law and partly to real estate speculations, 
early in life acquired affluence, but during Victoria's third 
year suddenly lost all that he had gained, and sat down like a 
beggar in the dust of despair. 

The mother, from her youth, had been a monomaniac, a 
spiritualist before the name of spiritualism was coined, and 
before the Rochester knoekings had noised themselves into the 
public ear. She saw visions and dreamed dreams. During 
the half year preceding Victoria's birth, the mother became 
powerfully excited by a religious revival, and went through the 
process known as " sanctification." She would rise in prayer 
meetings and pour fourth passionate hallelujahs that some- 
times electrified the worshippers. The father, colder in tem- 
perament, yet equally inclined to the supernatural, was her 
partner in these excitements. When the stroke of poverty 
felled them to the earth, these exultations were quenched in 
grief. The father, in the opinion of some, became partially 
crazed ; he would take long and rapid walks, sometimes of 
twenty miles, and come home with bleeding feet and haggard 
face. The mother, never wholly sane, would huddle her chil- 
dren together as a hen her chickens, and wringing her hands 
above them, would pray by the hour that God would protect 
her little brood. Intense melancholy — a misanthropic gloom 
10* 



228 A BAD CROWD. 

thick as a sea fog — seized jointly upon both their minds, and 
at intervals ever since has blighted them with its mildew. It 
is said that a fountain cannot send forth at the same time 
sweet waters and bitter, and yet affection and enmity will pro- 
ceed from this couple almost at the same moment. At times 
they are full of craftiness, low cunning, and malevolence ; at 
other times they beam with sunshine, sweetness and sincerity. 
-I have seen many strange people, but the strangest of all are 
the two parents whose commingled essence constitutes the 
spiritual principle of the heroine of this tale. 

Just here, if any one asks, " How is it that such parents 
should not have reproduced their eccentricities in their chil- 
dren ?" I answer, "This is exactly what they have done." 
The whole brood are of the same feather, except Victoria and 
Tennie. What language shall describe them ? Such another 
family circle of cats and kits, with soft fur and sharp claws, 
purring at one moment and fighting the next, never before fill- 
ed one house with their clamors since Babel began. They 
love and hate — they do good and evil — they bless and smite 
each other. They are a sisterhood of furies, tempered with 
love's melancholy. Here and there one will drop on her knees 
and invoke God's vengeance on the rest. But for years there 
has been one common sentiment sweetly pervading 'the breasts 
of a majority toward a minority of the offspring — namely, a 
determination that Victoria and Tennie should earn all the 
money for the support of the numerous remainder of the Claf- 
lin tribe — wives, husbands, children, servants, and all. Being 
daughters of the horseleech, they cry "give." It is the com- 
mon law of the Claflin clan that the idle many shall eat up the 
substance of the thrifty few. Victoria is a green leaf, and her 
legion of relatives are caterpillars who devour her. Their sin 
is that they return no thanks after meat; they curse the hand 
that feeds them. They are what my friend Mr. Greeley calls 
" a bad crowd." I am a little rough in saying this, I admit ; 
but I have a rude prejudice in favor of the plain truth." 

[If the elder Claflin had been father-in-law and mother-in- 
law to their daughter's biographer, we could understand, with- 
out much difficulty, the painful minuteness of description 
which he lavished upon their characteristics. But we respect- 
fully submit that his caricatures of the old lady and gentle- 
man are really outrageous. What would be excusable, on the 



LIKE "JOAN OF ARC" 227 

ground of precedent, in the case of one of their daughter's 
numerous husbands, is unwarrantable in that of a mere stran- 
ger and devotee at the Woodhull shrine. We are forced to be- 
lieve that "the whole brood" didn't extend to Mr. Tilton that 
hearty welcome which he received at the hands of "Victoria 
and Tennie." They must have treated the eminent historian 
as an interloper, or he never would have drawn upon Mr. 
Greeley's vocabulary to call them "a bad crowd." What 
charming simplicity in his assertion that he "has a rude pre- 
judice in favor of the plain truth ? " — Eagle Critic. 

Victoria's schooldays comprised, all told, less than three 
years — stretching with broken intervals between her eighth and 
eleventh. The aptest learner of her class, she was the pet 
alike of scholars and teacher. Called "The Little Queen" 
(not only from her name but her demeanor) she bore herself 
with mimic royalty, like one born to command. Fresh and 
beautiful, her countenance being famed throughout the neigh- 
borhood for its striking spirituality, modest, yet energetic, and 
restive from the overfullness of an inward energy such as 
quickened the young blood of Joan of Arc, she was a child of 
genius, toil and grief. The little old head on the little young 
shoulders was often bent over her schoolbook at the midnight 
hour. Outside of the schoolroom she was a household drudge, 
serving others so long as they were awake, and serving herself 
only when they slept. Had she been born black or been 
chained to a cart wheel in Alabama, she could not have been a 
more enslaved slave. During these school years, child as she 
was, she was the many burdened maid of all work in the large 
family of a married sister; she made fires, washed and ironed, 
she baked bread, she cut wood, she spaded a vegetable garden, 
she went on errands, she tended infants, she did everything. 
"Victoria! Victoria!" was the call in the morning before the 
cock crowing ; when, bouncing out of bed, the "little steam 
engine," as she was styled, began her buzzing activities for the 
day, Light and fleet of step, she ran like a deer. She was 
everybody's favorite — loved, petted, and by some marveled at 
as a semi-supernatural being. ***** 

[" To comment on the above paragraph, would be to shower 
hot sand on a garden bed of flowers. So it shall gleam, unset, 
save only with a mere invitation to the reader to consider more 



223 SHE CONSULTS HER ORACLES. 

than once the religious accuracy which tells how Victoria 
" made fires, washed and ironed, Baked bread, spaded a vegeta- 
ble garden, went on errands, did everything." Cinderella and 
the Prince over again — only this time, a pamphlet biography 
instead of a glass shoe.]— Eagle Critic." 

She acquired her studies, performed her work, and lived her 
v life by the help (as she believes) of heavenly spirits. From 
her childhood till now (having reached her thirty-third year) 
her anticipation of the other world has been more vivid than 
her realization of this. She has entertained angels, and not 
unawares. These gracious guests have been her constant com- 
panions. They abide with her night and day. They dictate 
her life with daily revelation ; and like St. Paul, she is " not 
disobedient to the heavenly vision." She goes and comes at 
their behest. ****** g er writings and 
speeches are the products, not only of their indwelling in her 
soul, but of their absolute control of her brain and tongue. 
Like a good Greek of the olden time, she does nothing with- 
out consulting her oracles. Never, as she avers, have they de- 
ceived her, nor ever will she neglect their decrees. * * * 
* * Seldom a day goes by but she enters into this fairy 
land, or rather into this spirit-realm. In pleasant weather she 
has a habit of sitting on the roof of her stately mansion on 
Murray Hill, and there communing hour by hour with the 
spirits. She is a religious devotee — her simple theology being 
an absorbing faith in God and the angels. 

Moreover, I may as well mention here as later, that every 
characteristic utterance which she gives to the world is dicta- 
ted while under spirit influence, and most often in a totally 
unconscious state. The words that fall from her lips are gar- 
nered by the swift pen of her husband, and published almost 
verbatim as she gets and gives them. To take an illustration, 
after her recent nomination to the Presidency by " The Vic- 
toria League," she sent to that committee a letter of superior 
dignity and moral weight. It was a composition which she 
had dictated while so outwardly oblivious to the dictation, that 
when she ended and awoke, she had no memory at all of what 
she had just done. The product of that strange and weird 
mood was a beautiful piece of English, not unworthy of 
Macaulay; and to prove what I say, I adduce the following elo- 
quent passage, which (I repeat) was published without change 
as it fell from her unconscious lips: — 



VICTORIA SECOND. 229 

" I ought not to pass unnoticed," she says " your courteous 
and graceful allusion to what you deem the favoring omen of 
my name. Ifc is true that a Victoria rules the great rival na- 
tion opposite to us on the other shore of the Atlantic, and ifc 
might grace the amity just sealed between the two nations, 
and be a new security of peace, if a twin sisterhood of Victo- 
rias were to preside over the two nations. It is true, also, that 
in its mere etymology the name signifies Victory! and the vic- 
tory for the right is what we are bent on securing. It is again 
true, also, that to some minds there is a consonant harmony 
between the idea and the word, so that its euphonious utter- 
ance seems to their imaginations to be itself a genius of suc- 
cess. However this may be I have sometimes imagined that 
there is perhaps something providential and prophetic in the 
fact that my parents were prompted to confer on me a name 
which forbids the very thought of failure; and, as the great 
Napoleon believed the star of his destiny, you will at least ex- 
cuse me, and charge ifc to the credulity of the woman, if I be- 
lieve also in. fatality of triumph as somehow inhering in my 
name." 

In quoting this passage, I wish to add that its author is a 
person of no special literary training; indeed, so averse to the 
pen that, of her own will, she rarely dips it into ink, except to 
sign her business autograph; nor would she ever write at all 
except for those spirit-promptings which she dare not disobey; 
and she could not possibly have produced the above peroration 
except by some strange intellectual quickening — some over- 
brooding moral help. This (as she says) she derives from the 
spirit world. One of her text is, "I will lift up mine eyes un- 
to the hills from whence cometh my help — my help cometh 
from the Lord who made Heaven and Earth." She reminds 
me of the old engraving of St. Gregory dictating his homilies 
under the outspread wing of the Holy Dove. 

It has been so from her childhood. So that her school 
studies were, literally, a daily miracle. She would glance at a 
page, and know it by heart. The tough little mysteries which 
bother the bewildered brains of country school dullards, were 
always to her as vivid as the sunshine. And when sent on 
long and weary errands, she believes that she has been lifted 
over the ground by her angelic helpers — " lest she should dash 
her foot against a stone." When she had too heavy a basket 
to carry, an unseen hand would sometimes carry it for her. 
Digging in the garden as if her back would break, occasionally 



230 B.EH SPIRITUAL VISION. 

a strange restfulness would refresh her, and she knew that the 
spirits were toiling in her stead. All this may seem an illusion 
to everybody else, but will never be other than a reality to 
her. 

"Let me cite some details of these spiritual phenomena, 
curious in themselves, and illustrating the forces that impel 
her career. 

" ' My spiritual vision/ she says dates back as early as my 
third year.' In Victoria's birthplace, a young woman named 
Eachel Scribner, about twenty-five years of age, who had been 
Victoria's nurse, suddenly died. On the day of her death, 
Victoria was picked up by her departing spirit, and borne off 
into the spirit world. To this day Mrs. Woodhull describes 
vividly her childish sensations as she felt herself gliding through 
the air — like St. Catherine winged away by the angels. Her 
mother testifies that while this scene was enacting to the child's 
inner consciousness, her little body lay as if dead for three hours. 

Two of her sisters, who had died in childhood, were con- 
stantly present with her. She would talk to them as a girl 
tattles to her dolls. They were her most fascinating play- 
mates, and she never cared for any others while she had their 
invisible society. 

In her tenth year, one day while sitting by the side of a cradle 
rocking a sick babe to sleep, she says that two angels came, and 
gently pushing her away, began to fan the child with their 
white hands, until its face grew fresh and rosy. Her mother 
then suddenly entered the chamber, and beheld in amazement 
the little nurse lying in a trance on the floor, her face turned 
upward toward the ceiling, and the pining babe apparently in 
the bloom of health. 

[In the above paragraph it will be seen that Mr. Tiiton 
"warms to his work," and that his enthusiastic confidence in 
the gifted Woodhull expands into a wider faith in each and 
every one of her elastic creeds. Clinging to her snowy petti- 
coats he climbs painfully "to the roof of her stately mansion 
en Murray Hill," and there blissfully contemplates the sainted 
Victoria " communing hour by hour with the spirits." We can 
imagine the first consternation, afterward charging to mute 
surprise, of the neighbors as they descried Mr. Tiiton and Mrs. 
Woodhull thus enthusiastically engaged in ghostly exercises. 



DEMOSTHENES. 231 

Mr. Tilton, slowly and majestically telescoping himsglf through 
the scuttle and handing Mrs. Woodhull through the same nar- 
row aperture as a preface to their "communing hour by hour 
with the spirits," must, indeed, have been a remarkable spec- 
tacle, and one doubtless much appreciated by the residents of 
the vicinity. 

But while Mr. Tilton gloomily smoKed his cigar "on the 
roof of her stately mansion on Murray Hill," Mrs. Woodhull, 
"unbeknownst to him," was holding high and lofty converse, 
as befitted one perched on a housetop with no less a spiritual 
dignity than Demosthenes. Why Demosthenes, unless be- 
cause of his quadrusylldbate, and therefore prodigious name, 
we can't for the life of us make out. But the testimony of Mr. 
Tilton is clear enough that although he didn't see the great 
orator with his own eyes, yet did Mrs. Woodhull "commune 
with him hour by hour," a proceeding which would have been 
excessively monotonous and irritating to any one less patient 
and considerate than Mr. Tilton, who was apparently more 
than content to deal with Demosthenes second-hand, per Mrs. 
Woodhull, as schoolboys explore the rhetorical mysteries with 
the secret aid and assistance of "cribs," and "ponies." — Eagle 
Critic] 

The chief among her spiritual visitants, and one who has 
been a majestic guardian to her from the earliest years of her 
remembrance, she describes as a matured man of stately figure, 
clad in a Greek tunic, solemn and graceful in his aspect, strong 
in his influence, and altogether dominant over her life. For 
many years, notwithstanding an almost daily visit to her vision, 
he withheld his name, nor would her most importunate ques- 
tionings induce him to utter it. But he always promised that 
in due time he would reveal his identity. Meanwhile he proph- 
esied to her that she would rise to great distinction; that she 
would emerge from her poverty and live in a stately house ; 
that she would win great wealth in a city which he pictured 
as crowded with ships; that she would publish and conduct a 
journal; and that finally, to crown her career, she would be- 
come the ruler of her people. At length, after patiently wait- 
ing on this spirit guide for twenty years, one day in 1868, 



232 VICTORIA'S MARRIAGE. 

during a temporary sojourn in Pittsburgh, and while she was 
sitting at a marble table, he suddenly appeared to her, and 
wrote on the table in English letters the name "Demosthe- 
nes." At first the writing was indistinct, but grew to such a 
lustre that the brightness filled the room. The apparition, 
familiar as it had been before, now affrighted her to trembling. 
The stately and commanding spirit told her to journey to New 
York, where she would find at No. 17 Great Jones street, a 
house in readiness for her, equipped in all things to her use 
and taste. She unhesitatingly obeyed, although she never be- 
fore had heard of Great Jones street, nor until that revelatory 
moment had entertained an intention of taking such a resi- 
dence. On entering the house, it fulfilled in reality the pic- 
ture which she saw of it in her vision — the self-same hall, stair- 
ways, rooms, and furniture. Entering with some bewilderment 
into the library, she reached out her hand by chance, and with- 
out knowing what she did, took up a book which, on idly look- 
ing at its title, she saw (to her blood-chilling astonishment) to 
be " The Orations of Demosthenes." Erom that time onward, 
the Greek statesman has been even more palpably than in her 
earlier years her prophetic monitor, mapping out the life which 
she must follow, as a chart for the ship sailing at sea. She be- 
lieves him to be her familiar spirit — the author of her public 
policy, and the inspirer of her published words. Without in- 
truding my own opinion as to the authenticity of this inspira- 
tion, I have often thought that if Demosthenes could arise and 
speak English, he could hardly excel the fierce light and heat 
of some of the sentences which I have heard, from this singular 
woman in her glowing hours. 

[Mr. Tilton then returns to Victoria's marriage at the age of 
fourteen years, to a husband in his twenty-eighth year — a mar- 
riage that was approved by her parents, but which Tilton be- 
lieves they should have prevented. He says of this event : — 

" Erom the endurable cruelty of her parents, she fled to the 
unendurable cruelty of her husband. She had been from her 
twelfth to her fourteenth year a double victim, first to chills 
and fever, and then to rheumatism, which had jointly played 
equal havoc with her beauty and health, until she was brought 
within a step of "the iron door." Dr. Canning Woodhull, a 
gay rake, but whose habits were kept hid from her under gen- 
eral respectability of his family connections (his father being 
an eminent judge, and his uncle the Mayor of New York), 



VICTORIA'S MARRIAGE. 233 

was professionally summoned to visit the child, and, being a 
trained physician, arrested her decline. Something about her 
artless manners and vivacious mind captivated his fancy. 
Coming as a prince, he found her as Cinderella — a child of the 
ashes. Before she entirely recovered, and while looking hag- 
gard and sad, one day he stopped her in the street, and said, 
"My little chick, I want you to go with me to the picnic" — 
referring to a projected Fourth of July excursion then at hand. 
The promise of a little pleasure acted like a charm on the house- 
worn and sorrow-stricken child. She obtained her mother's 
assent to her going, but her father coupled it with the condi- 
tion that she should first earn money enough to buy herself a pair 
of shoes. So the little fourteen-year old drudge became for the 
nonce an apple merchant, and with characteristic business en- 
ergy sold her apples and bought her shoes. She went to the 
picnic with Dr. VVoodhull, like a ticket-of-leave juvenile delin- 
quent, on a furlough. Cn coming home from the festival, the 
brilliant fop, who, tired of the demi-monde ladies whom he 
could purchase for his pleasure, and inspired with a sudden and 
romantic interest in this artless maid, said to her: "My little 
puss, tell your father and mother that I want you f r a wife." 
The startled girl quivered with anger at this announcement, 
and with timorous speed fled to her mother and repeated the 
tale, feeling as if some injury was threatened her and some 
danger impended. But her parents, as if not unwilling to be 
rid of a daughter whose sorrow was ripening her into a woman 
before her time, were delighted at the unexpected offer. They 
thought it a grand match. They helped the young man's suit 
and augmented their persecutions of the child. Ignorant, in- 
nocent and simple, the girl's chief thought of the proffered 
marriage was an escape from the parental yoke. Four months 
later she accepted the change — flying from the ills she had to 
others that she knew not of. Her captor, once possessed of his 
treasure, ceased to value it. On the third day after taking his 
child wife to his lodgings, he broke her heart by remaining 
away all night at a house of ill repute. Then for the first time 
she learned, to her dismay, that he was habitually unchaste and 
given to fits of intoxication. She was stung to the quick. The 
shock awoke all her womanhood. She grew ten years older in 
a single day. A tumult of thought swept like a whirlwind 
through her mind, ending at last in predominant purpose, 
namely, to reclaim her husband. She set herself religiously to 
this pious task — calling on God and the spirits to help her. 



234 HER FIRST CHILD. 

Squandering his money like a prodigal, he suddenly put his 
wife into the humblest quarters, where, left mostly to herself, she 
dwelt in bitterness of spirit, aggravated from time to time by 
learning of his ordering baskets of champagne, and drinking 
himself drunk in the company of * * * * * * * 

Sometimes, with uncommon courage, through rain and sleet, 
half clad and shivering, she would track him to his dens, and 
^by the energy of her spirit compel him to return. At other 
times, all night long she would watch at the window, waiting for 
his footsteps, until she heard then languidly shuffling along the 
pavement with the staggering reel of a drunken man, in the 
shameless hours of the morning. 

During all this time, she passionately prayed Heaven to give 
her the heart of her husband, but Heaven, decreeing otherwise, 
withheld it from her, and for her good. 

In fifteen months after her marriage, while living in a little 
low frame house in Chicago, in the dead of Winter, with icicles 
clinging to her bedpost, and attended only by her half drunken 
husband, she brought forth in almost mortal agony her first 
born child. In her ensuing helplessness, she became an object 
of pity to a next door neighbor who, with a kindness which the 
sufferer's unhomehke home did not afford, brought her day by 
day some nourishing dish. This same ministering hand would 
then wrap the babe in a blanket, and take it to a happier 
mother in the near neighborhood, who was at the same time 
nursing a new born son. In this way Victoria and her child — 
themselves both children — were cared for with mingled gentle- 
ness and neglect. 

At the end of six days the little invalid attempted to rise and 
put her sickroom in order, when she was taken with delirium, 
during which her mother visited her just in time to save her 
life. 

On her recovery, and after a visit to her father's house, she 
returned to her own, to be horror struck at discovering that 
her bed had been occupied the night before by her husband in 
company with a wanton of the streets, and that the room was 
littered with the remains of their drunken feast. 

" The biographer describes the desertion of the child-wife by 
the husband for an entire month, her visit to a fashionable 
boarding house, where Dr. W. was living with a female in the 
relation of husband and wife, her exposure of him, and the ex- 
pulsion of the Dr. and his mistress from the house in disgrace. 



SHE GOES TO CALIFORNIA. 235 

Of the first fruits of this ill-assorted marriage Mr. Tilton 
writes : — 

To add to her misery she discovered that her child, begotten 
in drunkness, and born in squalor, was a half idiot; predes- 
tined to be a hopeless imbecile for life; endowed with just 
enough intelligence to exhibit the light of reason in dim 
eclipse — a sad and pitiful spectacle in his mother's honse to- 
day, where he roams from room to room, muttering noises 
more sepulchral than human; a daily agony to the woman 
who bore him, hoping more of her burden; and heightening 
the pathos of her perpetual scene by the uncommon sweetness 
of his temper which, by winning everyone's love, doubles 
every one's pity. 

Journeying to California as a region where she might in- 
spire her husband to begin a new life freed from old associa- 
tions, she there found herself and her little family strangers in 
a strange city — beggars in a land of plenty. Change of sky 
is not change of mind. Dr. Woodhull took his habits, his 
wife took her necessities, and both took their misery, from 
E;ist to West. In San Francisco, the girlish woman, with un- 
relaxed energy, and as part of that lifelong heroism which will 
one day have its monument, set herself to supporting the man 
by whom she ought to have been supported. — A morning journal 
had an advertisement — "A cigar girl wanted." The wile, with 
her face of sweet sixteen, presented herself as the first candi- 
date, and was accepted on the spot. The proprietor was a 
stalwart Californian — one of those men who catch from a new 
country something of the liberality which the sailor brings 
from the sea. She served for one day behind his counter — 
blushing, modest and sensitive, her ears tingling at every rude 
remark by every uncouth customer — and at nightfall her em- 
ployer, who had noticed the blood coming and going in her 
cheeks, said to her, "My little lady, you are not the clerk I 
want ; I must have somebody who can rough it ; you are too 
fine." Inquiring into her case he was surprised to find her 
married and a mother. At first he discredited this informa- 
tion, but there was no denying the truth of her story. He ac- 
companied her to her husband, and as the two men discovered 
themselves to each other as brother Freemasons, he gave his 
clerk of a day a twenty dollar gold piece and dismissed her 
with his blessing. And I hope this has been revisited on his 
own head. * * * * * * * * Resorting 



236 * VICTORIA, COMB HOME!" 

to her needle, she carried from house to house this only 
weapon which many women possess wherewith to fight the bat- 
tle of life. She chanced to come upon Anna Cogswell, the 
actress, who wanted a seamstress to make her a theatrical 
wardrobe. The winsome dressmaker was engaged at once. 
Bufcher earnings at this new calling did not keep pace with 
expenses. u It is no use," said she to her dramatic friend; "I 
am running behindhand. I must do something better." 
" Then," replied the actress, " you, too, must be an actress." 
And, nothing loth to undertake anything new and difficult, 
Victoria, who never before had dreamed of such a possibility, 
was engaged as a lesser light to the Cogswell star. For a first 
appearance she was cast in the part of the Country Cousin in 
"New York by Gaslight." The text was given to ' her in the 
morning, she learned and rehearsed it during the day, and 
made a fair hit in it at night. For six weeks thereafter she 
earned fifty-two dollars a week as an actress. 

" Never leave the stage," said some of her fellow performers, 
all of whom admired her simplicity and spirituality. "But I 
do not care for the stage," she said, "and I shall leave it at 
the first opportunity. I am meant for some other fate. But 
what it is, I know not." 

It came — as all things have come to her — through the agency 
of spirits. One night, while on the boards, clad in a pink silk 
dress and slippers, acting in the ball room scene in the " Corsi- 
can Brothers," suddenly a spirit voice addressed her saying, 
"Victoria, come home !" Thrown instantly into a clairvoyant 
condition, she saw a vision of her young sister Tennie, then a 
mere child — standing by her mother, and both calling the ab- 
sent one to return. Her mother and Tennie were then in 
Columbus, Ohio. She saw Tennie distinctly enough to notice 
that she wore a striped French calico frock. " Victoria, come 
home !" said the little messenger, beckoning with her childish 
forefinger. The apparition would not be denied. Victoria 
thrilled and chilled by the vision and voice, burst away at a 
bound behind the scenes, and without waiting to change her 
dress, ran, clad with all her dramatic adornments, through a 
foggy rain to her hotel, and packing up her few things that 
night, betook herself with her husband and child next morn- 
ing to the steamer bound for New York. On the voyage she 
w r as thrown into such vivid spiritual states that she produced 
a profound excitement among the passengers. On reaching 
her mother's home she came upon Tennie dressed in the same 



A CLAIRVOYANT. 237 

dress as in the vision ; and on inquiring the meaning of the 
message, "Victoria, come home!" was told that at the time it 
was uttered her mother had said to Tennie, " My dear, send the 
spirits after Victoria to bring her home; "and moreover the 
French calico dress had appeared to her spirit sight at the very 
first moment its wearer had put it on. 

This homeward trip, and its consequences, marked a new 
phase in her career — a turning point in her life. 

Hitherto her clairvoyant faculty had been put to no pecuni- 
ary use, but she was now directed by the spirits to repair to 
Indianapolis, there to announce herself as a medium, and to 
treat patients for the cure of disease. Taking rooms in the 
Bates House, and publishing a card in the journals, she found 
herself able, on saluting her callers, to tell by inspiration their 
names, their residence, and their maladies. In a few days she 
became the town's talk. Her marvelous performances in clair- 
voyance being noised abroad, people flocked to her from a dis- 
tance. Her rooms were crowded and her purse grew fat. She 
reaped a golden harvest — including, as it worthiest part golden 
opinions from all sorts of people. Her countenance would 
often glow as with a sacred light, and she became an object of 
religious awe to many wonder stricken people whose inward 
lives she had revealed. Moreover, her unpretentious modesty, 
and her perpetual disclaiming of any merit or power of her own, 
and the entire crediting of this to spirit influence, augmented 
the interest with which all spectators regarded the amiable 
prodigy. First at Indianapolis, and afterwards at Terre Haute, 
she wrought some apparently miraculous cures. She straight- 
ened the feet of the lame; she opened the ears of the deat"; she 
detected the robbers of a bank ; she brought to light hidden 
crimes; she solved physiological problems ; she unveiled busi- 
ness secrets ; she prophecied future events. Knowing the 
wonders which she wrought, certain citizens disguised them- 
selves and came to her, purporting to be strangers from a dis- 
tant town, but she instantly said, " Oh, no; you all live here." 
"How can you tell ?" they asked. "The spirits say so," she 
replied. 

Benedictions followed her; gifts were lavished upon her; 
money flowed in a stream towards her. Journeying from city 
to city in the practice of her spiritual art, she thereby suppor- 
ted all her relatives far and near. Her income in one year 
reached nearly a hundred thousand dollars. She received in 
one day, simply as fees for cures which she had wrought, five 



238 HER DIVORCE. 

thousand dollars. The sum total of the receipts of her prac- 
tice, and of her investments growing out of it, up to the time 
of its discontinuance by direction of the spirits in 1869, was 
seven hundred thousand dollars. The age of wonders has not 
ceased ! 

During all this period, though outwardly prosperous, she 
was inwardly wretched. The dismal fact of her son's half 
idiocy so preyed upon her mind that, in a heat of morbid feel- 
ing, she fell to accusing her innocent self for his misfortunes. 
The sight of his face rebuked her, until, in brokenness of 
spirit, she prayed to God for another child — a daughter — to be 
born, with a fair body and a sound mind. Her prayer was 
granted, but not without many accompaniments of inhuman- 
ity. Once during her carriage of her unborn charge, she was 
kicked by its father in a fit of drunkenness — inflicting a bruise 
on her body and a greater bruise to her spirit. Profound as 
her double suffering was, in its lowest depth there was a deeper 
still. She was plunged into this at the child's birth. This 
event occurred at No. 53 Bond street, New York, April 23d, 
1861. She and her husband were at the time the only occu- 
pants of the house — her trial coming upon her while no nurse, 
or servant, or other human helper was under the roof. * * 

[Here follows details too disgusting to reproduce. — The 
Author. ] 

It was this horrible experience that first awoke her mind to 
the question: 

"Why should I any longer live with this man?" Hitherto 
she had entertained an almost superstitious idea of the devo- 
tion with which a wife should cling to her husband. She had 
always been so faithful to him, that, in his cups, he would 
mock and jeer at her fidelity, and call her a fool for maintain- 
ing it. At length the fool grew wiser, and after eleven years 
of what, with conventional mockery, was called a marriage— 
during which time her husband had never spent an evening 
with her at home, had seldom drawn a sober breath, and had 
spent on other women, not herself, all the money he had ever 
earned — she applied in Chicago for a divorce, and obtained it. 

Previous to this crisis, there had occurred a remarkable in- 
cident which more than ever confirmed her faith in the guar- 
dianship of spirits. One day, during a severe illness of her 
son, she left him to visit her patients, and on her return was 



TENNIE A FORTUNE-TELLER. 239 

startled with the news that the boy had died two hours before. 
"No," she exclaimed, " I will not permit his death.', And 
with frantic energy she stripped her bosom naked, caught up 
his lifeless form, pressed it to her own, and sitting thus, flesh 
to flesh, glided insensibly into a trance in which she remained 
s ven hours, at the end of which time she awoke; perspiration 
started from his clammy skin, and the child that had been 
thought dead was brought back again to life — and lives to this 
day in sad half death. It is her belief that the spirit of Jesus 
Christ brooded over the lifeless form, and rewrought the mira- 
cle of Lazarus for a sorrowing woman's sake. 

Victoria's father and mother, growing still more fanatical 
with their advancing years, had all along subjected her to a 
series of singular vexations. And the elder sisters had joined 
in the mischief making, out-doing the parents. Sometimes 
they would burst in upon Mrs. Woodhull's house, and attempt 
to govern its internal economy ; sometimes they would carry 
off the furniture, or garments, or pictures ; sometimes they 
would crown her with eulogies as the greatest of human beings, 
and in the same breath defame her as an agent of the devil. 

But their great cause of persecution grew out of her younger 
sister Tennie's career. 

This young woman developed, while a child in her father's 
house, a similar power to Victoria's. It was a penetrating 
spiritual insight applied to the cure of disease. But her father 
and mother, who regarded their daughter in the light of the 
damsel mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, who " brought 
her masters much gain by soothsaying," put her before the pub- 
lic as a fortune teller. By adding to much that was genuine 
in her mediumship more that was charlatanry, they aroused 
against this fraudulent business the indignation of the sincere 
soul of Victoria, who, more than most human beings, scorns a 
lie, and would burn at the^stake rather than practice a deceit. 
She clutched Tennie, as by main force, and flung her out of 
this semi-humbug, to the mingled astonishment of her money- 1 
greedy family, one and all. At this time Tennie was support- 
ing a dozen or twenty relatives by her ill-gotten gains. Vic- 
toria's rescue of her excited the wrath of all- these parasites — 
which has continued hot and undying against both to this day. 
The fond and fierce mother alternately loves and hates the two 
united defiers of her morbid will; and the father, at times a 
Mephistopheles, waits till the inspiration of cunning overmas- 
ters his parental instinct, and watching for a moment when his 



240 COL. BLOOD. 

ill word to a stranger will blight their business schemes, drops 
in upon some capitalist whose money is in their hand, lodges 
an indictment against his own flesh and blood, takes out his 
handkerchief to hide a few well feigned tears, clasps his hands 
with an nnfelt agony, hobbles off smiling sardonically at the 
mischief which he has done, and the next day repents his 
wickedness with genuine contrition and manlier woe. These 
parents would cheerfully give their lives as a sacrifice to atone 
for the many mischiefs which they have cast like burrs at their 
children; but if all the scars which they and their progeny 
have inflicted on one another could be magically healed to-day, 
they would be scratched open by the same hands and set sting- 
ing and tingling anew to-morrow. 

There is a maxim that marriages are made in heaven, albeit 
contradicted by the Scripture which declares that in heaven 
there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. But, even 
against the Scripture, it is safe to say that Victoria's second 
marriage was made in heaven; that is, it was decreed by the 
self same spirits whom she is ever ready to follow, whether 
they lead her for discipline into the valley of the shadow of 
death or for comfort in those ways of pleasantness which are 
paths of peace. 

Col. James H. Blood, commander of the Sixth Missouri Kegi- 
ment, who, at the close of the war, was elected City Auditor of 
St. Louis, who became President of the Society of Spiritualists 
in that place, and who had himself been, like Victoria, the 
legal partner of a morally sundered marriage, called one day on 
Mrs. Woodhull to consult her as a spiritualistic physician (hav- 
ing never met her before), and was startled to see her pass into 
a trance, during which she announced, unconsciously to her- 
self, that his iuture destiny was to be linked with hers in 
marriage. Thus, to their mutual amazement, but to their sub- 
sequent happiness, they were betrothed on the spot by "the 
powers of the air." The legal tie by which at first they bound 
themselves to each other was afterward by mutual consent an- 
nulled — the necessary form of Illinois law being complied with 
to this effect. But the marriage law stands on its merits, and 
is to all who witness its harmony knoAvn to be a sweet and ac- 
cordant union of congenial souls. 

Col. Blood is a man of a philosophic and reflective cast of 
mind, an enthusiastic student of the higher lore of spiritual- 
ism, a recluse from society, and an expectant believer in a stu- 
pendous destiny for Victoria. A modesty not uncommon to 



THEIR MIDNIGHT HO URS. 241 

men of intellect, prompts him to sequester his name in the 
shade rather than to see it glittering in the sun. But he is an 
indefatigable worker — driving his pen through all hours of the 
day and half of the night. He is an active editor of Woodhull 
and Claflin's Weekly, and one of the busy partners in the firm 
of Woodhull, Claflin & Co., Brokers, at 44 Broad street, New 
York. His civic views are (to use his favorite designation of 
them) cosmopolitical; in other words, he is a radical of extreme 
radicalism — an internationalist of the most uncompromising 
type — a communist who would rather have died in Paris than 
be the president of a pretended republic whose first official act 
has been the judicial murder of the only Eepublicans in 
France. His spiritualistic habits he describes in a letter to his 
friend, the writer of this memorial, as follows: "At about 
eleven or twelve o'clock at night, two or three times a week, 
and sometimes without nightly intervals, Victoria and I hold 
parliament with the spirits. It is by this kind of study that 
we both have learned nearly all the valuable knowledge that 
we possess. Victoria goes into a trance, during which her 
guardian spirit takes control of her mind, speaking audibly 
through her lips, propounding various matters for our subse- 
quent investigation and verification, and announcing princi- 
ples, detached thoughts, hints of systems and suggestions for 
affairs. In this way and in this spiritual night school, began 
that process of instruction by which Victoria has arisen to her 
present position as a political economist and politician. Du- 
ring her entranced state, which generally lasts about an hour, 
but sometimes twice as long, I make copious notes of all she 
says, and when her speech is unbroken, I write down every 
word, and publish it without correction or amendment. She 
and I regard all the other portion of our lives as almost value- 
less as compared with these midnight hours/' The preceding 
extract shows that this fine-grained trancendentalist is a rever- 
ent husband to his spiritual wife, the sympathetic companion 
of her entranced moods, and their faithful historian to the 
world. 

After a union with Col. Blood, instead of changing her 
name to his, she followed the example of many actresses, sing- 
ers, and other professional women whose names have become 
a business property to their owners, and she still continues to 
be known as Mrs. Woodhull. 

One night, about half a year after their marriage, she and 
her husband were awakened at midnight, in Cincinnati, by the 



242 WILL BE REWARDED IN HEA VEN. 

announcement that a man by the name of Dr. Woodhull had 
been attacked with delirium tremens at the Burnet House, and 
in a lucid moment had spoken of the woman from whom he 
had been divorced, and begged to see her. Col. Blood imme- 
diately took a carriage, drove to the hotel, brought the wretched 
victim home, and jointly with Victoria took care of him with 
life-saving kindness for six weeks. On his going away they 
gave him a few hundred dollars of their joint property to make 
him comfortable in another city. He departed full of grati- 
tude, bearing with him the assurance that he would always be 
willing to come and go as a friend of the family. And from 
that day to this, the poor man, dilapidated in body and emas- 
culated in spirit, has sojourned under Victoria's roof and some- 
times elsewhere, according to his whim or will. In the present 
ruin of the young gallant of twenty years ago, there is more 
manhood (albeit an expiring spark like a candle in its socket) 
than during any of the former years; and to be now turned 
out of doors by the woman he wronged, but who would not 
wrong him in return, would be an act of inhumanity which it 
would be impossible for Mrs. Woodhull and Col. Blood, either 
jointly or separately to commit. For this piece of noble con- 
duct — what is commonly called her living with two husbands 
under one roof — she has received not so much censure on earth 
as I think she will receive reward in heaven. No other passage 
of her life more signally illustrates the nobility of her moral 
judgments, or the supernal courage by which she stands by 
her convictions. Not all the clamorous tongues in Christen- 
dom, though they should simultaneously cry out against her, 
" Fie, for shame ! " could persuade her to turn this wretched 
wreck from her home. And I say she is right; and I will 
maintain this opinion against the combined Pecksniffs of the 
whole world. 

This act, and the malice of enemies, together with her bold 
opinions on social questions, have combined to give her repu- 
tation a stain. But no slander ever fell on any human soul 
with greater injustice. A more unsullied woman does not 
walk the earth. She carries in her very face the fair legend of 
a character kept pure by a sacred fire within. She is one of 
those aspiring devotees who tread the earth merely as a step- 
ping stone to heaven, and whose chief ambition is finally to pre- 
sent herself at the supreme tribunal "spotless, and without 
wrinkle, or blemish, or any such thing." Knowing her as well 
as I do, I cannot hear an accusation against her without recal- 
ling Tennyson's line of King Arthur: 



LAD T BROKERS. 243 

"Is thy white blamelessness accounted blame? " 

Fulfilling a previous prophecy, and following a celestial 
mandate, in 18C9, she founded a bank and published a journal. 
These two events took the town by storm. When the doors of 
her office in Broad street were first thrown open to the public, 
several thousand visitors came in a flock on the first day. The 
"lady brokers," as they were called (a strange confession that 
brokers are not always gentlemen), were besieged like lionesses 
in a cage. The daily press interviewed them; the weekly wits 
satirized them; the comic sheets caricatured them; but like a 
couple of fresh young dolphins, breasting the sea side by side, 
they showed themselves native to the element, and cleft grace- 
fully every threatening wave that broke over their heads. The 
breakers could not dash the brokers. Indomitable in their 
energy, the sisters won the good graces of Commodore Vander- 
bilt — a fine old gentleman of comfortable means, who of all the 
loAver animals prefers the horse, and of all the higher virtues 
admires pluck. Both with and without Commodore Vander- 
bilt's help, Mrs. Woodhull has more than once shown the pluck 
that has held the rein of the stock market as the Commodore 
holds his horse. Her journal, as one sees it week by week, is 
generally a willow basket full of audacious manuscripts, ap- 
parently picked up at random and thrown together pell mell, 
stunning the reader with a medley of politics, finance, free love, 
and the pantarchy. This sheet, when the divinity that shapes 
its end shall begin to add to the rough hewing a little smooth 
shaping; in other words, when its unedited chaos shall come 
to be moulded by the spirits to that order which is Heaven's 
first law; this not ordinary but "cardinary" journal, which is 
edited in one world, and published in another, will become less 
a confusion to either, and more a power for both. 

In 1870, following the English plan of self-nomination, Mrs. 
Woodhull announced herself as a candidate for the Presidency, 
mainly for the purpose of drawing public attention to the 
claims of women to political equality with man. She accom- 
panied this announcement with a series of papers in the Herald 
on politics and finance, which have since been collected into a 
volume entitled "The Principles of Government." She has 
lately received a more formal nomination to that high office by 
the Victoria League, an organization which, being somewhat 
Jacobinical in its secrecy, is popularly supposed, though not 
definitely known, to be presided over by Commodore Vander- 
bilt, who is also similarly imagined to be the golden corner- 



2M: IN A TRANCE. 

stone of the business house of Woodhull, Claflin & Co. Should 
she be elected to the high seat to which she aspires (an event 
concerning which I make no prophecy), I am at least sure that 
she would excel any queen on any throne now in her native 
faculty to govern others. 

"One night in December, 1869, while she lay in deep sleep, 
her Greek guardian came to her, and sitting transfigured by 
her couch, wrote on a scroll (so that she could not only see 
the words, but immediately dictated them, to her watchful 
amanuensis) the memorable document now known in history 
as "The Memorial of Victoria 0. Woodhull" — a petition 
addressed to Congress, claiming under the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment the right of women as of other 'citizens of the United 
States " to vote in " the States wherein they reside " — asking, 
moreover, that the State of New York, of which she was a 
citzen, should be restrained by Federal authority from prevent- 
ing the exercise of this constitutional right. As up to this time 
neither she nor her husband had been greatly interested in 
women suffrage, he had no sooner written this manifesto from 
her lips, than he awoke from the trance, and protested against 
the communication as nonsense, believing it to be a trick of 
some evil disposed spirits. In the morning the document was 
shown to a number of friends, including one eminent judge, 
who ridiculed its logic and conclusions. But the lady herself, 
from whose sleeping and yet unsleeping brain that strange 
document had sprung like Minerva from the head of Jove, 
simply answered that her antique instructor, having never 
misled her before, was guiding her aright then. Nothing 
doubting, but much wondering, she took the novel demand to 
Washington, where after a few days of laughter from the 
shallow minded, and of neglect from the indifferent, it sud- 
denly burst upon the Federal Capital like a storm, and then 
spanned it like a rainbow. She went before the Judiciary 
Committee, and delivered an argument in support of her claim 
to the franchise under the new amendments, which some who 
heard it, pronounced one of the ablest efforts which they had 
ever heard on any subject. She caught the listening ears of 
Senator Carpenter, Gen. Butler, Judge Woodward, George W. 
Julian, General Ashley, Judge Loughridge and other able 
statesmen in Congress, and harnessed these gentlemen as 
steeds to her chariot. Such was the force of her appeal that 
the whole city rushed together to hear it, like the Athenians 
to the market place when Demosthenes stood in his own and 



B UTLERS SCALP. 245 

not a borrowed clay. A great audience, one of the finest ever 
gathered in the Capitol, assembled to hear her defend her 
thesis in the first public speech of her life. At the moment 
of rising, her face was observed to be very pale, and she 
appeared about to faint. On being afterward questioned as to 
the cause of her emotion, she replied that, during the first 
prolonged moment, she remembered an early prediction of her 
guardian spirit, until then forgotten, that she would one day 
speak in public, and that her first discourse would be produced 
in the Capital of her country. The sudden fulfilment of this 
prophesy smote her so violently that for a moment she was 
stunned into apparent unconsciousness. But she recovered 
herself, and passed through the ordeal with great success — 
which is better luck than happened to the real Demosthenes, 
for Plutarch mentions that his maiden speech was a failure, 
and that he was laughed at by the people. 

"Assisted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright Davis, 
Isabella Beecher Hooker, Susan B. Anthony, and other staunch 
and able women whom she swiftly persuaded into accepting 
this construction of the Constitution, she succeeded, after her 
petition was denied by a majority of the Judiciary Committee, 
in obtaining a minority report in its favor, signed jointly by B. 
F. Butler, of Massachusetts, and Judge Loughridge, of Iowa. 
To have clutched this report from Gen. Butler — as it were a 
scalp from the ablest head in the House of Representatives — 
was a sufficient trophy to entitle the brave lady to an enroll- 
ment in the political history of her country. She means to go 
to Washington again next winter to knock at the half open 
doors of the Capitol until they shall swing wide enough asun- 
der to admit her enfranchised sex. 

" I must say something of her personal appearance, although 
it defies portrayal, whether by photograph or pen. Neither 
tall nor short, stout nor slim, she is of medium statue, lithe 
and elastic, free and graceful. Her side face looked at over 
her left shoulder, is of perfect aquiline outline, as classic as 
ever went into a Roman marble, and resembles the masque of 
Shakspeare taken after death ; the same view, looking from the 
right, is a little broken and irregular; and the front face is 
broad, with prominent cheek bones, and with some unshapely 
nasal lines. Her countenance is never twice alike, so variable 
is its expression and so dependent are her moods, Her soul 
comes into it and goes out of it, giving her at one time the 
look of a superior and almost saintly intelligence, and at 



246 NO SUCH WORD AS FAIL. 

another dull, commonplace and unprepossessing. When under 
a strong spiritual influence, a strange and mystical light 
irradiates from her face, reminding the beholder of the Hebrew 
Lawgiver who gave to men what he received from God and 
whose face during the transfer shone. Tennyson, as with the 
hand of a gold-beater, has beautifully gilded the same expres- 
sion in his stanza of St. Stephen the Martyr in the article of 
death : 

" And looking upward full of grace, 
He prayed, and from a happy place, 
God's glory smote him on the face." 

"In conversation, until she is somewhat warmed with 
earnestness, she halts, as if her mind were elsewhere, but the 
moment she brings all her faculties to her lips for the full 
utterance of her message, whether it be of persuasion or indig- 
nation, and particularly when under spiritual control, she is a 
very orator for eloquence — pouring forth her sentences like a 
mountain stream, sweeping away everything that frets its flood. 

" Her hair, which when left to itself is as long as those tresses 
of Hortense in which her son, Louis Napoleon, used to play 
hide and seek, she now mercilessly cuts close like a boy's, from 
impatience at the daily waste of time in suitably taking care 
of this prodigal gift of nature. 

" She can ride a horse like an Indian, and climb a tree like 
an athlete ; she can swim, row a boat, play billiards, and dance ; 
moreover, as the crown of her physical virtues, she can walk 
all day like an English woman. 

"'Difficulties/ says Emerson, 'exist to be surmounted.' 
This might be the motto of her life. In her lexicon (which is 
still of youth) there is no such word as fail. Her ambition 
is stupendous — nothing is too great for her grasp. Prescient 
of the grandeur of her destiny, she goes forward with a resist- 
less fanaticism to accomplish it. Believing thoroughly in her- 
self (or rather not in herself but in her spirit aids), she allows 
no one else to doubt either her or them. In her case the old 
miracle is enacted anew — the faith which removes mountains. 
A soul set on edge is a conquering weapon in the battle of 
life. Such, and of Damascus temper, is hers. 

"In making an epitome of her views I may say that in 
politics she is a downright Democrat, scorning to divide her 
fellow citizens into upper and lower»classes, but ranking them 
all in one comprehensive equality of right, privilege and 



JOHN STUART MILL. 2±7 

opportunity; concerning finance, which is a favorite topic with 
her, she holds that gold is not the true standard of money 
value, but that the Government should abolish the gold 
standard, and issue its notes instead, giving to those a fixed 
and permanent value, and circulating them as the only money; 
on social questions, her theories are similar to those which have 
long been taught by John Stuart Mill and Elizabeth Cady 
Stanton, and which are styled by some as free love doctrines, 
while others reject this appellation on acount of its popular 
association with the idea of a promiscuous intimacy between 
the sexes — the essence of her system being that marriage is of 
the heart and not of the law, that when love ends marriage 
should end with it, being dissolved by nature, and that no civil 
statute should outwardly bind two hearts which have been 
inwardly sundered; and finally in religion she is a spiritualist 
of the most mystical and ethereal type. 

In thus speaking of her views, 1 will add to them another 
fundamental article of her creed, which an incident will best 
illustrate. Once a sick woman who had been given up by the 
physicians, and who had received from a Catholic priest ex- 
treme unction in expectation of death, was put into the care 
of Mrs. Woodhull, who attempted to lure her back to life. 
This zealous physician, unwilling to be baffled, stood over her 
patient day and night, neither sleeping nor eating fur ten days 
and nights, at the end of which time she was gladdened not 
only at witnessing the sick woman's recovery, but at finding 
that her own body, instead of weariness or exhaustion from 
the double lack of sleep and food, Was more fresh and bright 
than at the beginning. Her face, during this discipline, grew 
uncommonly fair and ethereal; her flesh wore a look of trans- 
parency; and the ordinary earthiness of mortal nature began 
to disappear from her physical frame and its place to be sup- 
plied with what she fancied were the foretokens of a spiritual 
oody. These phenomena were so vivid to her own conscious- 
ness and to the observation of her friends, that she was led to 
speculate profoundly on the transformation from our mortal to 
our immortal state, deducing the idea that the time will come 
when the living human body, instead of ending in death by 
disease, and dissolution in the grave, will be gradually refined 
away until it is entirely sloughed off and the soul only, and 
not the flesh, remains. It is in this way that she fulfills "to her 
daring hope the prophecy that "the last enemy to be destroyed 
is death." 



24S SIMEON STYLITES. 

Engrossed in business affairs, nevertheless at any moment 
she would rather die than live, such is her infinite estimate of 
the outer world over this. But she disdains all commonplace 
parleyings with the spirit realm such as are had in ordinary 
spirit manifestations. On the other hand, she is passionately 
eager to see the spirits face to face, to summon them at her 
will and commune with them at her pleasure. 'Twice, as she 
unshakenly believes, she has seen a vision of Jesus Christ, 
honored thus doubly over St. Paul, who saw his Master but 
once, and then was overcome by the sight. She never goes to 
any church, save to the solemn temple whose starry arch spans 
her housetop at night, where she sits like Simeon Stylites on 
his pillar, a worshiper in the sky. Against the inculcations 
of her childish education, the spirits have taught her that He 
whom the church calls the Savior of the world is not God but 
man. But her reverence for Him is supreme and ecstatic. 
The Sermon on the Mount fills her eyes with tears. The ex- 
ulting exclamations of the Psalmist are her familiar outburs s 
of devotion. For two years, as a talisman against any tempta- 
tion toward untruthfulness (which, with her, is the unpardona- 
ble sin), she wore stitched into the sleeve of every one of her 
dresses the second verse of the 110th Psalm, namely, "Deliver 
my soul, Lord; from lying lips, and from a deceitful 
tongue." Speaking the truth punctiliously, Avhether in great 
things or small, she rigorously exacts the same of others, that 
a deceit practiced upon her enkindles her soul to a fire ; and 
she has acquired a clairvoyant or intuitive power to detect a 
lie in the moment of its utterance, and to smite the liar in his 
act of guilt. She believes that intellectual power had its foun- 
tains in spiritual inspiration. And once when I put to her the 
searching question, "What is the greatest truth that has ever 
been expressed in words?" she thrilled me with the sudden 
answer, " Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see 
God." 

As showing that her early clairvoyant power still abides, I 
will mention a fresh instance. An eminent judge in Pennsyl- 
vania, in whose court house I had once lectured, called lately 
to see me at the office of the Golden Age. On my inquiring 
after his family, he told me that a strange event had just hap- 
pened in it. "Three months ago," said he, "'while I was in 
New York, Mrs. Woodhull said to me, with a rush of feeling, 
'Judge, I foresee that you will lose two of your children with- 
in six weeks.' " This announcement, he said, wounded him as 



LUCHETIA MOTT. 249 

a tragic sort of trifling with life and death. " But," I asked, 
"did anything follow the prophecy?" "Yes," he replied, "ful- 
fillment; I lost two children within six weeks." The Judge, 
who is a Methodist, thinks that Victoria, the clairvoyant, is 
like "Anna, the prophetess." 

Let me say that I know of no person against whom there 
are more prejudices, nor any one who more quickly disarms 
them. This strange faculty is the most powerful of her pow- 
ers. She shoots a word like a sudden sunbeam through the 
thickest mist of people's doubts and accusations, and clears the 
sky in a moment. Questioned by some committee or delegation 
who have come to her with idle tales against her busy life, I 
have seen her swiftly gather together all the stones which they 
have cast, put them like the miner's quartz into the furnace, 
melt them with fierce and fervent heat, bring out of them the 
purest gold, stamp thereon her image and superscription as if 
she were sovereign of the realm, and then (as the marvel of it 
all) receive the sworn allegiance of the whole company on the 
spot. At one of her public meetings when the chair (as she 
hoped) would be occupied by Lucretia Mott, this venerable 
woman had been persuaded to decline this responsibility, but af- 
terward stepped forward on the platform and lovingly kissed the 
young speaker in the presence of the multitude. Her enemies 
(save those of her own household) are strangers. To see her 
is to respect her — to know her is to vindicate her. She has 
some impetuous and headlong faults, but were she without the 
same traits which produce these she would not possess the mad 
and magnificent energies which (if she lives) will make her a 
heroine of history. 

In conclusion, amid all the rush of her active life, she be- 
lieves with Wordsworth that 

" The gods approve the depth and not 
The tumult of the soul." 

So, whether buffeted by criticism, or defamed by slander, she 
carries herself in that religious peace which through all tur- 
bulence, is "a measureless content." When apparently about 
to be struck down, she gathers unseen strength and goes for- 
ward conquering and to conquer. Known only as a rash icon- 
oclast, and ranked even with the most uncouth of those noise 
makers who are waking a sleepy world before its time, she 
beats her daily gong of business and reform with notes not 
musical but strong, yet mellows the outward rudeness of the 
11* 



250 THE EAGLE'S CRITICISMS. 

rhythm by the inward and devout song of one of the sincerest, 
most reverent and divinely gifted of human souls. 

The above voluminous extracts from Mr. Tilton's biography 
of Mrs. Woodhull, clearly show the sentiments he entertained 
towards her when this glowing tribute to her talent and her 
virtues came fresh from his pen. Whether it be true, as Mrs. 
Woodhull alleges, that Theodore Tilton was her devoted lover 
is a secret probably only known to themselves ; but that this 
biography should 4ae reproduced in the journal that throughout 
the investigation championed the cause of the accused, and 
left the legitimate domain of journalism to traduce and bring 
disrepute on the accuser, is an evidence that the friends of the 
Plymouth pastor, feared the power held by Theodore Tilton. 
The Eagle editor in closing his criticism of the biography thus 
bitterly writes : 

"[Little remains to be added b}^ w r ay of comment to the extra- 
ordinary and suicidal columns in which Mr. Tilton sought to 
crucify the principles in behalf of which he yearns to expire 
in roseate martjTdom. While his own wife was suffering at 
home, wrapped in the shadow of doubt and suspicion, wrung 
with open charges against her fidelity to him, tortured with all 
the ingenious refinements which accumulated until the3 r drove 
her from her home and from her children, Mr. Tilton was busily 
engaged in glorifying a creature whose diabolical mission was 
the debasement and degradation of the purest and noblest of 
social institutions. 

As if in the bitterest iroiry at his own expense, he sacrificed 
the intellectual harvest of his life, on the altar of that very 
licentiousness which he complains has brought havoc into his 
household and dishonor on his name. That sacrifice confronts 
the people of Brooklyn to-day, in this page, and, if there be 
one person who can derive pleasure from contemplating the 
sorrowful spectacle, that person can be none other than the 
vicious and fatal adventuress who lured him into her house of 
death and at whose feet, as Sampson at Delilah's he fell and 
slumbered, to his own ruin and despair. 

On Friday July 26th Mrs. Woodhull and her sister Miss 
Claflin arrived unexpectedly in the city and were immediately 
interviewed by the reporters of several journals. As it bears 



W. & G. RETURN FROM CALIFORNIA. 251 

directly upon her relations with Mr. Tilton and flatly contra- 
dicts the reported interview given with her in Chap. IX. as to 
criminal relations between her and her biographer, it is given 
here in full as it appeared in the Argus on the following day : — 

" ' I would not have granted this meeting to any but an Argus 
representative,' began Mrs. Woodhnll, with a smile, ' but I 
saw a copy of your paper at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, last eve- 
ning, and I was delighted with the straightforward statement 
from Mr. Tilton, which it contained. Why, sir, do } T ou know,' 
said the lady, frankly, ' I have had reporters following me ever 
since I left San Francisco, but I did not wish to tell them any- 
thing, and I didn't.' 

" ' When did you leave San Francisco.' 

" ' Let me see — two weeks ago this morning. I stopped 
three or four days at Salt Lake City.' 

" ' Was it the Beecher-Tilton matter which prompted you to 
come East?' 

" ' Yes ; I intended remaining three or four months longer, 
but I looked upon this as my own battle, a battle for the prin- 
ciples which I have advocated, and I came straight on to take 
my part in the fight.' 

" There was little need of the reporter's propounding ques- 
tions after Mrs. Woodhnll had fairly opened on the subject. 
With that vivacity of manner and crispness of speech that have 
always characterized her, the lady gave her views plainly and 
emphatically. 

' " 4 1 know very well wiry this great pressure has been brought 
to bear to hide the truth. It is because many persons are 
frightened to death from fear that all the facts will be made 
known. And yet, what have they to be frightened about? Let 
them come out and withstand public opinion ! Eighteen hun- 
dred years ago Christ bade the woman sin no more ; and after 
all these years of wickedness and wretchedness, are men lit, to- 
day, to judge their fellows ?' 

" ' Mrs. Woodhull, you have read the Statement of Theodore 
Tilton "— 

" I have read eveiy word that has been printed.' 

" Very good. Do you believe that Statement to be true?' 

" ' Every word of it is true,' and her words were spoken 
with marked emphasis. She continued : 

" The only fault that I find is, that Theodore has told only 
one-third of what he ought and might have told. He wants 



252 WILL THE PUBLIC BE SATISFIED. 

to shield some one. Who is it? He has been a sorety-abused 
and injured man. He ought to speak out ! See the charity 
which he displa}'ed in living with his wife for years after be 
knew all! He has made an affidavit, and Mr. Beecher and 
Elizabeth deny its substance. Will the public be satisfied 
with simply a verbal denial? Let me tell you, the sentiment 
in the West — and I have had excellent opportunities for judg- 
ing it aright — is turning strongly in favor of Mr. Tilton. 

" Now ' here is a direct question, Mrs. Woodhull : Did Mrs. 
Tilton ever confess to you that she had been faithless to her 
marriage vows ?' 

"'I won't answer?' exclaimed Mrs Woodhull, impulsively. 
Then, after a moment's hesitation, she added : " When I first 
published the statement that I knew of two eminent divines 
who were living in concubinage and preaching from their pul- 
pits, I was not acquainted with Theodore Tilton. I had never 
met him. I supposed him to be a clergyman. The day after 
the announcement appeared, he called upon me, showed me the 
extract, and asked me if it referred to him. I told him it did. 
In two or three days' time, he invited me to his house, and in- 
troduced me to his wife. What would he have done that for? 
What if not to say Elizabeth, here is one who knows all !' 

" Then you did not get your first information from Mr. Til- 
ton?' 

" No ; that assertion is a falsehood. Elizabeth Cady Stan- 
ton and Isabella Hooker told me. The matter had been talked 
over for months between these ladies, before I gave it to the 
public. And, understand, it was the hypocrisy of the thing I 
detested. If, when I had made the charges, Mr. Beecher had 
come out and said, ' Well sir, what are } t ou going to do about 
it?' What could any one have done about it? Who w r as \p 
arraign the pastor of Ptvmouth Church?" 

" You remarked, just now, Mrs. Woodhull, that 3*011 believed 
Mrs. Tilton's Statement to be true. What think 3'ou of Mrs. 
Tilton's denial?" 

" Mrs. Tilton's denial is untrue, and I know it. Had Eliza- 
beth stopped to recall some facts, she would not have made 
such a statement. When Mr. Tilton found that Elizabeth 
loved Mr. Beecher, and when Mrs. Beecher found that her hus- 
band loved Elizabeth, it was positively wicked for either man 
and wife to live together longer. It is always wrong for two 
persons to live together when they do not love each other. 
Why, I have talked often with Mr. Beecher on this subject, and 



MOULTON GRAND AND GOOD. 253 

I know very well what his views are. You saw the words of 
his brother, Thomas K., ' Henry 011I3- carries out the philosophy 
against which I protested twenty years ago,' which means my 
philosophy. And that is the philosophy of Mr. Beecher. He 
knows the present social system is wrong ; he don't believe in 
it. I have asked him to preach what he practiced, but he has 
not had the courage to do so. Mr. Beecher sees a rottenness 
in the whole social world. To remedy this has been and is his 
philosophy. As to the Statement made by Mr. Beecher, I be- 
lieve that Mr. Beecher never wrote that statement. It doesn't 
show it. There is nothing in it suggestive of the man." 

" Your opinion of Mr. Frank Moulton is not changed, is it?" 
" Not in the least. I believe Frank Moulton to be the same 
grand, good man that he always was. As I said last night, 
Frank is one of nature's noblemen. He lias stood between Mr. 
Tilton and Mr. Beecher throughout this affair ; and he has done 
his duty to both. I do not believe he will shirk now." 
" His testimoivv, } t ou think, will be important?" 
" Of the utmost importance ! All that Mr. Tilton has said 
will be proven. He has the letters in his possession, and I 
know he will produce them. Without Frank Moulton's evi- 
dence, I think they would crush Mr. Tilton, for so many influ- 
ential members of Plymouth Church are bent on doing it." 
" And you have no doubt that Mr. Moulton will speak?" 
"None. Only yesterday, when I met him, he said, ' Theo- 
dore Tilton shall not be crucified,' and he meant what he 
said." 

" Do you know more of this matter, Mrs. Woodhull, than 
you have given to the world ?" 

" Yes, I know something of the inside history. When they 
are all done, I shall speak. I shall give some truths which are 
not now known, and some facts which are not now understood. 
By the ivay, I wish you would correct that absurd statement which 
appeared in some of the papers cliarging intimate relations be- 
tiveen Mr. Tilton and myself. It is an atrocious falsehood." 

" Just supposing the Committee should report adversely to 
Mr. Beecher's case — what do you predict the pastor of JPly- 
mouth would do? Step down and out?" 

" No, indeed ! I believe that he would collect about him a 
circle of higher minds than he ever has before. If he has noble- 
ness enough, even now, to state things as they are, he will rise 
to a higher eminence than he has ever attained." 

"Then you entertain no ill-feeling toward Mr. Beecher?" 
" Not the slightest. It is only the hypocrisy I hate !" 



CHAPTER XI. 

MR. BEECHER'S CALL FOR AN INVESTIGATION BY A .TTTRY OF HIS 
OWN CHOICE. — THE LONG LOOKED FOR BLOW FALLS AT LAST 

UPON THE PASTOR. THE ASTOUNDING CHARGES OF TILTON. 

OFT REPEATED ACTS OF CRIMINAL COMMERCE BETWEEN MRS. 

TILTON AND HER PASTOR. MR. BEECIIER CHARGED WITH U NEST 

HIDING." — A SAD TALE OF DOMESTIC INFELICITY. A WOMAN'S 

DEVOTED LOVE, RELIGIOUS ZEAL, PLATONIC LOVE FOR HER PAS- 
TOR, ETC. — HER CONFESSION TO HER HUSBAND. HOW MR. 

BEECIIER WRUNG A DENIAL OF THE CHARGES FROM HER TO 
SAVE AN EXPOSURE. 

rpHE public at once saw that the time had passed for com- 
T~ promise and the whole scandal was likely to be laid bare. 
The whole community were visibly excited over the threatened 
revelations, and the church especialry felt that there was no 
longer a hope of suppression. On the 27th of June, two days 
after the publication of Mr. Tilton's letter to Dr. Bacon, Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher asked several gentlemen of the Congre- 
gation of Plymouth Church to examine the charges against 
him, and to make a report in regard to them. The following 
is the letter, a copy of which was sent to each of the gentle- 
men named : — 

Brooklyn, June 27th, 1874. 

Gentlemen : In the present state of the public feeling, I owe it to my 

friends and to the Church and the Society over which I am pastor, to have 

some proper investigation made of the rumors, insinuations, or charges 

made respecting my conduct, as compromised by the late publications 

254 




MRS. ELIZABETH R. TILTON. 



BEECUER ASKS FOE AN INQUIRY. 255 

made by Mr. Tilton. I have thought that both the Church and the Society 
should be represented, and I take the liberty of asking the following gen- 
tlemen to serve in this inquiry, and to do that which truth and justice may 
require. I beg that each of the gentlemen named will consider this as if 
it had been separately and personally sent to him, namely : 

From the Church — Henry W. Sage, Augustus Storrs, Henry M. Cleve- 
land. 

From the Society — Horace B. Claflin, John Winslow, S. V. White. 

I desire you, when you have satisfied yourselves by an impartial and 
thorough examination of all sources of evidence, to communicate to the 
Examination Committee, or to the Church, such action as then may seem 
to you right and wise. Henry Ward Beecher. 

On the Gth of July, Mr. Beecher wrote the following note to 
the Examining Committee of Plymouth Church. 

July Gth, 1874. 
Dear Brethren : I enclose to you a letter in which I have requested 
three gentlemen from the Church, and three from the Society of Plymouth 
Church, (gentlemen of unimpeachable repute, and who have not been in- 
volved in any of the trials through which we have passed during the year), 
to make a thorough and impartial examination of all charges or insinua- 
tions against my good name, and to report the same to you ; and I now 
respectfully request that you will give to this Committee the authority to 
act in your behalf also. It seemed wise to me that the request should 
proceed from ma, and without your foregoing knowledge, and that you 
should give to it authority to act in your behalf in so far as a thorough in- 
vestigation of the facts should be concerned. 

Henry "Ward Beecher. 

Public opinion forced this course upon the accused pastor, 
and when it was published, sj'inpatby was created for him, where 
before his action was viewed with grave suspicion. All hope 
of a compromise was not } r et abandoned, however, and on the 
13th of July Frank Moulton, the mutual friend of Beecher and 
Tilton, appeared before the Committee and presented the 
following statement : — 

" Gentlemen of the Committee : — I appear before 3'ou at 3-our 
invitation, to make a statement which I have read to Mr. Til- 
ton and Mr. Beecher, which both deem honorable, and in the 
fairness and propriety of which, so far as I am concerned, the}^ 
both concur. The parties in this case are personal friends of 



256 MOULTON TO THE COMMITTEE. 

mine, in whose behalf I have endeavored to act, as the umpire 
and peacemaker, for the last four years, with a conscientious 
regard for ail the interests involved. I regret for your sakes 
the responsibilit}" imposed on me of appearing here to-night. 
If I say anything, I must speak the truth. I do not believe 
that the simple curiosity of the world at large, or even of this 
Committee, ought to be gratified through any recitation by me 
of the facts which are in my possession, necessarily in confidence, 
through my relations to the parties. The personal differences 
of which I am aware as the chosen arbitrator, have once been 
settled honorably between the parties, and would never have 
been revived, except on account of recent attacks, both in and 
out of Plymouth Church, made upon the character of Theodore 
Tilton, to which he thought a reply necessary. If the present 
issue is to be settled, it must be, in my opinion, by the parties 
themselves, either together or separately before your Committee, 
each taking the responsibility of his own utterance. As I am 
fully conversant with the facts and evidences, I shall, as be- 
tween these parties, if necessar}-, deem it my duty to state the 
truth, in order to final settlement, and that the world may be 
well informed before pronouncing its judgment with reference 
to either. I therefore suggest to you that the parties first be 
heard ; that if then 3-011 deem it necessary that 1 should appear 
before you, I will do so, to speak the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth. I hold to-night, as I have held 
hitherto, the opinion that Mr. Beecher should frankly state that 
he had committed an offence against Mr. Tilton, for which it 
was necessary to apologize, and for w^hich he did apologize in 
the language of the letter, part of which has been quoted ; that 
he should have stated frankly that he deemed it necessary for 
Mr. Tilton to have made the defence against Dr. Leonard 
Bacon which he did make, and that he (Mr. Beecher) should 
refuse to be a party to the re-opening of this painful subject. 
If he had made this statement, he would have stated no more 
than the truth, and it would have saved him and 3'ou the respon- 
sibility of a further inquiry. It is better now that the Commit- 
tee should not report ; and, in place of a report, Mr. Beecher 
himself should make the statement which I have suggested ; or 
that, if the Committee does report, the report should be a 
recommendation to Mr. Beecher to make such a statement." 

The action of Mr. Beecher in asking to be tried by a commit- 
tee of his own choosing excited much criticism, and for a few 



TILTON TO THE COMMITTEE. 257 

daj-s doubts were entertained whether Mr. Tilton would recog- 
nize that body as a proper tribunal to pass upon the momentous 
question of their pastor's guilt or innocence. But in the mean- 
time Mrs. Tilton, without the knowledge or consent of her hus- 
band, had appeared before them, and disavowed anj r criminal 
transactions with her pastor. This action at once aroused the 
husband, and rendered further compromise impossible. He at 
once recognized the Committee in the following communica- 
tion : — 

No. 174 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, July 13th, 1874. 

To the Investigating Committee : 

Gentlemen — When, on Friday last, I met you at your in- 
vitation, the appointment of 3'our Committee had not then 
been made known to the public. You sat in a private capacity. 

Moreover, one of your legal advisers had previously given 
me a hope that if, on my appearance before you, I would pre- 
serve a judicious reticence concerning the worst aspects of the 
case, I might thereby facilitate, through 3 T ou, such a moderate 
public presentation of Mr. Beecher's offense and apology as 
would close, rather than prolong, the existing scandal. 

I rejoiced in this hope, and promptly reciprocated the kindly 
feeling which was reported to me as shared by you all toward 
m\*self and family. 

Accordingly, when I met you in conference, my brief state- 
ment was, in substance, the two following points. First, that 
my letter to Dr. Bacon was written, not as an act of aggression, 
but of self-defense — arising, as therein set forth, from great 
and grievous provocation by your pastor, your Church, the 
Brooklyn Council, and the ex-Moderator's criticisms on my 
supposed conduct — all uniting to defame me before the world, 
and to inflict upon me an unjust punishment for acts done by 
another ; and second, that having by that letter defended my- 
self so far as I thought the occasion required me to carry my 
reply, I felt unwilling to proceed further against Mr. Beecher 
without farther public provocation or other necessity. 

Such a necessity is now laid upon me by Mr. Beecher him- 
self, in the publication of a direct request by him to you to in- 
quire officially into his character as affected by his offense and 
apology, to which I referred. He thus offers to me a direct 
challenge, not only before your Committee, but before the pub- 
lic, which I hereby accept. 



258 AN EARTHQ UAKE. 

I, therefore, give you notice that I shall prepare a full and 
detailed statement in accordance with the terms of your Com- 
mittee's invitation to me, " to furnish such facts, as are within 
nvy knowledge," touching matters u which compromise the char- 
acter of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher." I shall be read} T to lay 
this before }'ou within a week or ten days, or as soon thereafter 
as I shall find myself able to set the numerous facts and evi- 
dences in such strict array as that I can cover them, each and 
all, with my oath to their exact truth, sworn before a magis- 
trate. 

I await the appointment of a day by } t ou mutually convenient 
for my presentation of this statement in person before 3 T our 
Committee. 

Meanwhile I shall make public my present note to 3-ou, be- 
cause Mr. Beecher's letter to which this is a preliminary 
response has been made public b}' him. With great respect, 
I am truly yours, Theodore Tilton. 

There -was a week of suspense and anxiety in Brooklyn and 
indeed throughout the country, not unmixed with curiosity as 
to the nature of the offense which Mr. Tilton would charge 
against Mr. Beecher. The journals daily contained columns of 
speculations and interviews or alleged interviews with the prin- 
cipal parties to the scandal, but t\\zy are not embodied here, — 
the object of the compiler being to adhere as closely as possi- 
ble to the published record. Seven days after Mr. Tilton's 
recognition of the Committee he appeared before them with his 
charges, which Frank Moulton had assisted him to prepare,and 
read it to the Ply mouth Church jury on the evening of July 
20th. The following day the document appeared in full in the 
Brooklyn Argus. If the previous "True Story" was a thun- 
derbolt, this was an earthquake. People read it in utter aston- 
ishment, and from that moment Mr. Beecher's reputation 
seemed to be doomed for all time. But we will here give the 
letter accompanying the statement as a preface, and the sworn 
charges filed : 

" Gentlemen of the Committee : — Tn communicating to you 
the detailed statement of facts of evidences which you have 
been several days expecting at my hands let me remind you of 
the circumstances which call this statement forth. 



AFFECTATION OF IGNORANCE. 259 

" In m}' recent letter to Dr. Bacon I alluded to an offence 
and an apology by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. To whom- 
soever else this allusion seemed indefinite, to Mr. Beecher it was 
plain. The offence was committed Iry him ; the apology was 
made Ixyhim ; both acts were his own, and were among the most 
momentous occurrences of his life. Of all men in Plymouth 
Church, or in the world, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was the 
one man who was best informed concerning this offence and 
apology, and the one man who least needed to inquire into 
either. 

" Nevertheless, while possessing a perfect knowledge of both 
these acts done D3- himself, he has chosen to put on a public 
affectation of ignorance and innocence concerning them, and 
has conspicuously appointed a committee of six of the ablest 
men of his church, together with two attorneys, to inquire into 
what he leaves 3-011 to regard as the unaccountable iDystery of 
this offence and apolog} T ; as if he had neither committed the 
one nor offered the other ; but as if both were the mere figments 
of another man's imagination — thus adroitly prompting the 
public to draw the deduction that I am a person under some 
hallucination or delusion, living in a dream and forging a 
fraud. 

" Furthermore, in order to cast over this explanation the 
delicate glamour which always lends a charm to the defence of 
a woman's honor, Mrs. Elizabeth R. Tilton, lately my wife, has 
been prompted away from her home, to reside among Mr. 
Beecher's friends and to co-operate with him in his ostensibly 
honest and laudable inquiry into facts concerning which she 
too, as well as he, has for years past had perfect and equal 
knowledge with himself. 

" The investigation, therefore, has been publicly pressed up- 
on me by Mr. Beecher, seconded by Mrs. Tilton, both of whom, 
in so doing, have united in assuming before the public the non- 
existence of the grave and solemn facts into which they have 
conspired to investigate, for the purpose not of eliciting, but 
of denying the truth. 

" This joint assumption by them, which has seemed to } T our 
committee to be in good faith, has naturally led you into an 
examination in which you expect to find, on their part, nothing 
but innocence, and on my part nothing but slander. 

"It is now my unhappy duty, from which I have in vain 
hitherto sought earnestly to be delivered, to give 3*011 the facts 
and evidences for reversing 3-our opinion on this subject. 



260 NO SPACE FOR REPENTANCE. 

" In doing this painful, I may say heartrending duty, the 
responsibility for making the grave disclosures which I am 
about to lay before you belongs not to me, but first to Mr. 
Beecher, who has prompted you to this examination, and next 
to Mrs. Tilton, who has joined him in a conspiracy which can- 
not fail to be full of peril and wretchedness to many hearts. 

" I call 3'ou to witness that in my first brief examination by 
your committee I begged and implored you not to inquire into 
the facts of this case, but rather to seek to buiy them beyond 
all possible revelation. Happy for all concerned had this 
entreat}' been heeded. It is now too late. The last opportu- 
nity for reconciliation and settlement has passed. This inves- 
tigation, undertaken by you in ignorance of dangers against 
which Mr. Beecher should have w r arned* 3*011 in- advance, will 
shortly prove itself, to }~our surprise, to have been an act of 
wanton and wicked folly, for which the Eev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, as its originator and public sponsor, will hereafter 
find no " space for repentance, though he seek it carefully and. 
with tears." This desperate man must hold himself only, and 
not me, accountable for the wretchedness which these disclos- 
ures will carry to his own home and hearth, as they have already 
brought to mine. 

I will add that the original documents referred to in the 
ensuing sworn statement are, for the most part, in my posses- 
sion ; but that the apology and a few other papers are in the 
hands of Mr. Francis D. Moulton. Truly yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 

The charges are as follows : — 

" Whereas the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher has instigated the 
appointment of a committee consisting of six members of his 
church and societ} T to inquire and report upon alleged aspersions 
upon his character by Theodore Tilton ; and whereas Mrs. 
Elizabeth R. Tilton, formerly the wife of Mr. Tilton, has openly 
deserted her home in order to co-operate with Mrs. Beecher in 
a conspiracy to overthrow the credibility and good repute of 
her late husband as a man and citizen ; therefore, Theodore 
Tilton being thus authorized and required, and hj the published 
demand made upon him by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and 
being now and hereafter released b}~ act of Mrs. Tilton from 
further responsibility for concealment of the truth touching her 
relations with Mr. Beecher — therefore, Theodore Tilton hereby 
sets forth, under solemn oath, the following facts and testi- 
moirc: — - 



TILTON' S CHARGES. 2G1 

First— That on the 2d of October, 1855, at Plymouth church, 
Brooklyn, a marriage between Theodore TilLon and Elizabeth 
M. Richards was performed by the Rev. Henry "Ward Beecher, 
which marriage, thirteen years afterward, was dishonored and 
violated by this clergyman through the criminal seduction of 
this wife and mother, as hereinafter set forth. 

Second — That for a period of about fifteen years, extending 
both before and after this marriage, an intimate friendship 
existed between Theodore Tilton and the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, which friendship was cemented to such a degree that 
in consequence thereof the subsequent dishonoring by Mr. 
Beecher of his friend's wife was a crime of uncommon wrong- 
fulness and perfidy. 

Third — That about nine years ago the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher began, and thereafter continued, a friendship with Mrs. 
Elizabeth R. Tilton, for whose native delicacy and extreme 
religious sensibility he often expressed to her husband a high 
admiration ; visiting her from time to time for years, until the 
year 1870, when, for reasons hereinafter stated, he ceased such 
visits ; during which period, by many tokens and attentions, 
he won the affectionate love of Mrs. Tilton ; whereby after long 
moral resistance by her and after repeated assaults by him 
upon her mind with overmastering arguments, accomplished 
the possession of her person ; maintaining with her thencefor- 
ward, during the period hereinafter stated, the relation called 
criminal intercourse; this re ation being regarded by her during 
that period as not criminal or morally wrong — such had been 
the power of his arguments as a clergyman to satisfy her relig- 
ious scruples against such violation of virtue and honor. 

Fourth — That on the evening of October 10th, 18G8, or there- 
abouts, Mrs. Elizabeth R. Tilton held an interview with the 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher at his residence, she being then in 
a tender state of mind, owing to the recent death and burial of 
a j'oung child ; and during this interview an act of criminal 
commerce took place between this pastor and this parishioner, 
the motive on her part being, as hereinbefore stated, not regarded 
by her at the time criminal or wrong ; which act was followed 
by a similar act of criminality between these same parties at 
Mr. Tilton's residence, during a pastoral visit paid by Mr. 
Beecher to her on the subsequent Saturday evening, followed 
also by other similar acts on various occasions from the autumn 
of 18G8 to the spring of 1870, the places being the two resi- 
dences aforesaid, and occasionally other places to which her 



262 W 8 SUSPICIONS. 

pastor would invito and accompany her, or at which he would 
meet her by previous appointment, these acts of wrong being 
on her part, from first to last, not wanton or consciously 
wicked, but arising through a blinding of her moral perceptions, 
occasioned by the powerful influence exerted on her mind at 
that time to this end by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, as her 
trusted religious preceptor and guide. 

Fifth — That the pastoral visits made by the Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher to Mrs. Tilton during the } T ear 1858 became so 
frequent as to excite comment, being in marked contrast with 
his known habit of making few pastoral calls on his parishioners, 
which frequency in Mrs. Tilton's case is shown in letters writ- 
ten to her husband during his absence in the West, these letters 
giving evidence that during the period of five or six weeks 
twelve different pastoral calls on Mrs. Tilton were made by the 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, which calls became noticeably in- 
frequent on Mr. Tilton's return to his home. 

Sixth— That previous to the aforesaid criminal intimacy one 
of the reasons which Mrs. Tilton alleged for her encouragement 
of such exceptional attentions from the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher was the fact that she had been much distressed with 
rumors against his moral purity, and wished to convince him 
that she could receive his kindness and yet resist his solicita- 
tions ; and that she could inspire in him, by her purity and 
fidelity, an increased respect for the chaste dignity of woman- 
hood. Previous to the autumn of 1868 she maintained, with 
Christian firmness towards her pastor this position of resistance, 
always refusing his amorous pleas, which were strong and oft- 
repeated ; and in a letter to her husband, dated February 3d, 
18G8, she wrote as follows : — " To love is praisewortlry, but to 
abuse the gift is sin. Here I am strong. No demonstrations 
or fascinations could cause me to yield m}' womanhood." 

" Seventh — That the first suspicion which crossed the mind 
of Theodore Tilton that the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was 
abusing, or might abuse, the affection and reverence which Mrs. 
Tilton bore towards her pastor, was an improper caress given 
by Mr. Beecher to Mrs. Tilton by the * * * while seated 
by her side on the floor of his library overlooking engravings. 
Mr. Tilton, a few hours afterwards, asked of his wife an ex- 
planation of her permission of such a libert} T , whereat she at 
first denied the fact, but then confessed it, and said that she 
had spoken chidingly to Mr. Beecher concerning it. On an- 
other occasion Mr. Tilton, after leaving his house in the early 



MRS. TILTON CONFESSES. 263 

morning, returned to it in the forenoon, and, on going to his 
bedchamber, found the door locked, and when, on knocking, 
the door was opened by Mrs. Tilton, Mr. Beecher was seen 
within, apparently much confused, and exhibiting a flushed 
face. Mrs. Tilton afterwards made a plausible explanation, 
which, from the confidence reposed in her by her husband, was 
by him deemed satisfactory. 

" Eighth— That in the spring of 1870, on Mr. Tilton's return 
from a winter's absence, he noticed in his wife such evidences 
of the absorption of her mind in Mr. Beecher that in a short 
time an estrangement took place between her husband and 
herself, in consequence of which she went into the country 
earlier than usual for a summer sojourn. After an absence of 
several weeks she voluntarily returned to her home in Brook- 
lyn. On the evening of July 8th, 1870, when, and then and 
there, within a few hours after her arrival, and after exacting 
from her husband a solemn promise that he would do the Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher no harm nor communicate to him what 
she was about to say, she made a circumstantial confession to 
her husband of the criminal facts hereinbefore stated, accom- 
panied with citations from Mr. Beecher's arguments and 
reasonings with her to overcome her long maintained scruple 
against yielding to his desires, and declaring that she had com- 
mitted no wrong to her husband or her marriage vow, quoting, 
in support of this opinion, that her pastor had repeatedly 
assured her that she was spotless and chaste, which she be- 
lieved herself to be. She further stated that her sexual com- 
merce with him had never proceeded from low or vulgar 
thoughts either on her part or his, but always from pure affec- 
tion and a high religious love. She stated, furthermore, that 
Mr. Beecher habitually characterized their intimacy by the 
term " nest hiding," and he would suffer pain and sorrow if 
his hidden secret were ever made known. She said that her 
mind was often burdened by the deceit necessary for her to 
practice in order to prevent discovery, and that her conscience 
had many times impelled her to throw off this burden of en- 
forced falsehood by making a full confession to her husband, 
so that she would no longer be living before him a perpetual 
lie. In particular she said that she had been on the point of 
making this confession a few months previously, during a 
severe illness, when she feared she might die. She affirmed 
also that Mr. Beecher had assured her repeated^ that he loved 
her better than he had ever loved any other woman, and she 



2G4: TILTON CONDONES TEE WRONG. 

felt justified before God in her intimac}' with him, save the 
necessary deceit which accompanied it, and at which she fre- 
quently suffered in her mind. 

fct Ninth — That after the above-named confession by Mrs. 
Elizabeth R. Tilton she returned to the county to await such 
action by her husband as he might see fit to take, whereupon, 
after many considerations, the chief of which was that she had 
not voluntarily gone astra}', but had been artfully misled, 
through religious reverence for the Rev. Heniy Ward Beecher 
as her spiritual guide, together also from a desire to protect 
the family from open shame, Mr. Tilton condoned the wrong, 
and he addressed to his wife such letters of affection, tender- 
ness and respect as he felt would restore her wounded spirit, 
and which did partially produce that result. 

" Tenth — That in December, 1870, differences arose between 
Theodore Tilton and Henry C. Bo wen, which were augmented 
by the Rev. Heniy Ward Beecher and Mrs. Beecher ; in conse- 
quence whereof and at the wish of Mrs. Elizabeth R. Tilton, 
expressed in writing in a paper put into the hands of Mr. 
Francis D. Moulton, with a view to procure a harmonious in- 
terview between Mr. Tilton and Mr. Beecher, such an interview 
was arranged and carried out b} r Mr. Moulton at his then resi- 
dence on Clinton street ; Mr. Beecher and Mr. Tilton, meeting 
and speaking then and there for the first time since Mrs. Til- 
ton's confession of six months before. The paper in Mr. 
Moulton's hands was a statement by Mrs. Tilton of the sub- 
stance of the confession which she had before made and of her 
wish and prayer for reconciliation and peace between her pas- 
tor and her husband. This paper furnished to Mr. Beecher 
the first knowledge which- he had as yet received that Mrs. 
Tilton had made such a confession. At this interview between 
Mr. Beecher and Mr. Tilton permission was sought by Mr. 
Beecher to consult with Mrs. Tilton on that same evening. 
This permission being granted, Mr. Beecher departed from Mr. 
Moulton's house, and in about half an hour returned thither 
expressing his remorse and shame, and declaring that his life 
and work seemed brought to a sudden end. Later in the same 
evening Mr. Tilton, on returning to his house, found his wife 
weeping and in great distress, saying that what she had meant 
for peace had only given pain and anguish ; that Mr. Beecher 
had just called on her, declaring that she had slain him, and 
that he would probably be tried before a council of ministers 
unless she would give him a written paper for his protection. 



ELIZABETH'S LETTERS. 265 

Whereupon she said he dictated to her, and she copied in her 
own handwriting, a suitable paper for him to use to clear him- 
self before a council of ministers. Mrs. Tilton having kept no 
cop}' of this paper her husband asked her to make a distinct 
statement in writing of her design and meaning in giving it, 
whereupon she wrote as follows : — 

December 30th, 1870 — Midnight. 
My Dear Husband : — I desire to leave with you, before going to bed, a 
statement that Mr. Henry Ward Beecher called upon me this evening and 
asked me if I would defend him against any accusation in a council of min- 
isters, and I replied, solemnly, that I would, in case the accuser was any 
other person than my husband. He (H. W. B.) dictated a letter, which I 
copied as my own, to be used by him as against any other accuser except 
my husband. This letter was designed to vindicate Mr. Beecher against 
all other persons save only yourself. I was ready to give him this letter 
because he said with pain that my letter in your hands addressed to him, 
dated December 29th, " had struck him dead and ended his usefulness." 
You and I are pledged to do our best to avoid publicity. God grant a 
speedy end to all further anxieties. Affectionately, Elizabeth. 

" On the next day, namely, December 31st, 1870, Mr. Moul- 
ton, on being informed by Mr. Tilton of the above-named 
transaction by Mr. Beecher, called on him (Mr. Beecher) at 
his residence and told him that a reconciliation seemed sudden- 
ly made impossible by Mr. Beecher's nefarious act in procuring 
the letter which Mrs. Tilton had thus been improperly per- 
suaded to make falsely. Mr. Beecher, through Mr. Moulton, 
returned the letter to Mr. Tilton, with an expression of shame 
and sorrow for having procured it in the manner he did. The 
letter was as follows : — 

December 30th, 1870. 

Wearied with importunity and weakened by sickness, I gave a letter im- 
plicating my friend Henry Ward Beecher under assurance that it would 
remove all difficulties between me and my husband. That letter I now 
revoke. I was persuaded to it — almost forced — when I was in a weakened 
state of mind. 

I regret and recall all its statements. 

E. R. Tilton. 

I desire to say explicitly, Mr. Beecher has never offered any improper 
solicitation, but has always treated me in a manner becoming a Christian 
and a gentleman. Elizabeth R. Tilton. 

At the time of Mr. Beecher's returning the above document 
12 



2CG TRUSTED TO MOULTON. 

to Mr. Tilton through Mr. Moulton, Mr. Beecher requested M| 
Moulton to call at his residence, in Columbia Street, on thw 
next da}-, which he did on the evening of January 1st, 1871. A 
long interview then ensued, in which Mr. Beecher expressed to 
Mr, Moulton great contrition and remorse for his previous 
criminality with Mrs. Tilton, taking to himself shame for hav- 
ing misused his sacred office as a clergyman to corrupt her 
mind ; expressing a determination to kill himself in case of ex- 
posure, and begging Mr. Moulton to take a pen and receive 
from his (Mr. Beecher's) lips an apolog} r to be convej-ed to Mr. 
Tilton, in the hope that such an appeal would secure Mr. Til- 
ton's forgiveness. The apology which Mr. Beecher dictated 
to Mr. Moulton was as follows : — 

My Dear Friend Moulton : — I ask, through you, Theodore Tilton's 
forgiveness, and I humble myself before him as I do before my God. He 
would have been a better man in my circumstances than I have been. I 
can ask nothing, except that lie will remember all the other breasts that 
would ache. I will not plead for myself. I even wish that I were dead. 
But others must live to suffer. I will die before any one but myself shall 
be inculpated. All my thoughts are running out toward my friends, and 
toward the poor child lying there, and praying, with her folded bands. 
She is guiltless, sinned against, bearing the transgression of another. 
Her forgiveness I have. I humbly pray to God to put it into the heart of 
her husband to forgive me. 

I have trusted this to Moulton, in confidence. 

H. W. Beecher. 

In the above document, the last sentence and the signature 
are in the handwriting of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. 

Eleventh — That Mrs. Tilton wrote the following letter to a. 
friend : — 

No. 174 Livingston Street, 
Brooklyn, Jan. 5th, 1871. 
Dear Friend : — A cruel conspiracy has been formed against my hus- 
band, in which my mother and Mrs. Beecher have been the chief actors. 
* * * Yours truly, 

Elizabeth K. Tilton. 

Twelfth — That in the following month Mr. Moulton, wishing 
to bind Mr. Tilton and Mr. Beecher by mutual expressions of 
good spirit, elicited from them the following correspondence : — 



BEECHER TO MOULTON. 2G7 

MR. TILTON TO MR. MOULTON. 

Brooklyn, Feb. 7th, 1871. 

My Dear Friend : — In several conversations with you, you have asked 
about my feelings toward Mr. Beecher ; and yesterday you said the time 
had come when you would like to receive i'roni me an expression of this 
kind in writing. 

I say, therefore, very cheerfully, that, notwithstanding the great suffer- 
ing which he has caused to Elizabeth and myself, I bear Mm no malice, 
shall do him no wrong, shall discountenance every project (by whomsoever 
proposed) for any exposure of his secret to the public, and (if I know my- 
self at all) shall endeavor to act toward Mr. Beecher as I would have him 
in similar circumstances act toward me. 

I ought to add that your own good offices in this case have led me to a 
higher moral feeling than 1 might otherwise have reached. 
Ever yours, affectionately, 

To Frank Moulton. Theodore. 

On the same day Mr. Beecher wrote to Mr. Moulton the 
following :— - 

MR. BEECHER TO MR. MOULTON. 

February 7th, 1871. 
My Dear Friend Moulton : — I am glad to send you a book, etc. 
******** 

Many, many friends has God raised up to me, but to no one of them ha8 
He ever given the opportunity and the wisdom to serve me as you have. 

You have also proved Theodore's friend and Elizabeth's. Does God 
look down from heaven on three unhappier creatures that more need a 
friend than these? Is it not an Intimation of God's intent of mercy to all, 
that each one of these has in you a tried and proved friend? But only in 
you are we thus united. Would to God, who orders all hearts, that by His 
kind mediation Theodore, Elizabeth and I could be made friends again. 

Theodore will have the hardest task in such a case ; but has he not proved 
himself capable of the noblest things? 

I wonder if Elizabeth knows how generously he has carried himself toward 
me? Of course I can never speak with her again without his permission, 
and I do not know that even then it would be best. * * * 

Mr. Moulton, on the same daj^, asked Mr. Tilton if he would 
permit Mr. Beecher to address a letter to Mrs. Tilton, and Mr. 
Tilton replied in the affirmative, whereupon Mr. Beecher wrote 
as follows : — 



2G8 CATHARINE GA UNT. 

MR. BEECHER TO MRS. TILTON. 

Brooklyn, Feb. 7th, 1871. 

Mr Bear Mrs. Tilton : — When I saw you last I did not expect ever to 
see you again, or to be alive many days. God was kinder to me tban were 
my own thoughts. The friend whom God sent to me, Mr. Moulton, has 
proved, above all friends that I ever had, able and willing to help me in 
this terrible emergency of my life. His hand it was that tied up the storm 
that was ready to burst on our heads. 

You have no friend (Theodore excepted) who has it in his power to 
serve you so vitally, and who will do it with such delicacy and honor. 

It does my sore heart good to see in Mr. Moulton an unfeigned respect 
and honor for you. It would kill me if I thought otherwise. He will be 
as true a friend to your honor and happiness as a brother could be to a 
sister's. 

In him we have a common ground. You and I may meet in him. The 
past is ended. But is there no future? — no wiser, higher, holier, future? 
May not this friend stand as a priest in the new sanctuary of reconciliation, 
and mediate and bless Theodore and my most unhappy self? Do not let 
my earnestness fail of its end. You believe in my judgment. I have put 
myself wholly and gladly in Moulton's hand ; and there I must meet you. 

This is sent with Theodore's consent, but he has not read it. Will you 
return it to me by his own hand? I am very earnest in this Avish for all 
our sakes, as such a letter ought not to be subject to even a chance of mis- 
carriage. Your unhappy friend. II. W. Beech er. 

Thirteenth — That about a year after Mrs. Tilton's confession 
her mind remained in the fixed opinion that her criminal rela- 
tions with Mr. Beecher had not been morally wrong, so strong- 
ly had he impressed her to the contraiy ; but at length a change 
took place in her convictions on this subject, as noted in the 
following letter addressed by her to her husband : — 

Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

Schoharie, June 29th, 1871. 
My Dear Theodore — To-day, through the ministry of Catherine Gaunt, 
a character of fiction, my eyes have been opened for the first time in my 
experience, so that I see clearly my sin. It was when I knew that I was 
loved, to suffer it to grow to a passion. A virtuous woman should check 
instantly an absorbing love. But it appeared to me in such false light. 
That the love I felt and received could harm no one, not even you, I have 
believed unfalteringly, until four o'clock this afternoon, when the heavenly 
vision dawned upon me. I see now, as never before, the wrong I have 
done you, and hasten immediately to ask your pardon, with a penitence 



A CARD IN THE " WORLD." 269 

so sincere that henceforth (if reason remains) you may trust me implicitly. 
Oh, my dear Theodore ! though your opinions are not restful or congenial 
to my soul, yet my own integrity and purity are sacred and holy things to 
me. Bless God, with me, for Catherine Gaunt, and for all the sure 
leadings of an all-wise and loving Providence. Yes, now I feel quite pre- 
pared to renew my marriage vow with you, to keep it as the Savior 
requireth, who looketh ac the eye and the heart. Never before could I say 
this. When you yearn towards me with true feeling, be assured of the 
tried, purified and restored love of Elizabeth. 

Mrs. Tilton followed the above letter with these : — 
Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

July 4th, 1871. 
Oh, my dear husband ! may you never need the discipline of being mis- 
led by a good woman as I was by a good man. 

[No date.] 
I would mourn greatly if my life was to be made known to father. His 
head would be bowed indeed to the grave. 

[No date.] 
Do not think my ill health is on account of my sin and its discovery. 
My sins and life-record I have carried to my Savior. No ; my prostra- 
tion is owing to the suffering I have caused you. 

Fourteenth — That about one year after Mrs. Tilton's con- 
fession, and about a half year after Mr. Batcher's confirmation 
of the same, Mrs. V. C. Woodhull, then a total stranger to 
Mr. Tilton, save that he had been presented to her in a com- 
pany of friends a few clays previous, wrote in the Worlds Mon- 
day, May 22d, 1871, the following statement, namely : — 

I know of one man, a public teacher of eminence, who lives in concu- 
binage with the wife of another public teacher of almost equal eminence. 
All three concur in denouncing offences against morality. I shall make it 
my business to analyze some of these lives. 

Victoria C. Woodhull. 

New York, May, 20th, 1871. 

On the day of the publication of the above card in the World, 
Mr. Tilton received from Mrs. Woodhull a request to call, on 
imperative business, at her office ; and on going thither, a copy 
of the above card was put into his hand by Mrs. Woodhull, 
who said that " the parties referred to therein were the Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher and the wife of Theodore Tilton." Fol- 
lowing this announcement, Mrs Woodhull detailed to Mr. 



270 HENRY'S PHILOSOPHY CARRIED OUT. 

Tilton, with vehement speech, the wicked and injurious story 
which she published in the year following. Meanwhile, Mr. 
Tilton, desiring to guard against any possible temptation to 
Mrs. Woodhull to publish the grossly distorted version which 
she gave to Mr. Tilton (and which she afterwards attributed to 
him), he sought by many personal services and kindly atten- 
tions to influence her to such a good will towards himself and 
v family as would remove all disposition or desire in her to 
afflict him with such a publication. Mr. Tilton's efforts and 
association with Mrs. Woodhull ceased in April, 1872, and six 
months afterwards — namely, November 2d, 1872 — she published 
the scandal which he had labored to suppress. 

XV. That on the third day thereafter, the Rev. Thomas K. 
Beecher, of Elmira, N. Y., wrote as follows : 

Elmira, November 5th, 1871. 
Mrs. Woodhull only carries out Henry's philosophy, against which I 
recorded my protest twenty years' ago. 

XVI. That in May, 1873, the publication by one of Mr. 
Beecher's partners of a tripartite covenant between H. C. 
Bowen, H. W. Beecher, and Theodore Tilton, led the press of 
the country to charge that Mr Tilton had committed against 
Mr. Beecher some heinous wrong, which Mr. Beecher had par- 
doned ; whereas the truth was the reverse. To remedy this 
false public impression, Mr. Moulton requested Mr. Beecher to 
prepare a suitable card, relieving Mr. Tilton of this injustice. 

In answer to this request Mr. Beecher pleaded his embarrass- 
ments, which prevented his saying anything without bringing 
himself under suspicion. Mr. Tilton then proposed to prepare 
a card of his own, containing a few lines from the recently quo- 
ted apology, for the purpose of showing that Mr. Beecher, in- 
stead of having had occasion to forgive Mr. Tilton, had had 
occasion to be forgiven b} T him. Mr. Beecher then wrote a let- 
ter to Mr. Moulton, which, on being shown to Mr.' Tilton, was 
successful in appealing to Mr. Tilton's feelings. Mr. Beecher 
said in it, under date of Sunday morning, June 1st, 1873 : 

My Dear Frank : 

I am determined to make no more resistance. Theodore's temperament 
is such that the future, even if temporarily earned, would be absolutely 
worthless, and rendering me liable at any hour of the day to be obliged to 
stultify all the devices by which we saved ourselves. It is only fair that 
he should know that the publication of the card which he proposes would 
leave him worse off than before. The agreement [viz., the " tripartite cov- 



OLIVER JOHNSON SPEAKS. 271 

enant "] was made after my letter through you to him [viz., the " apology"] 
was written. He had had it a year. He had condoned his wife's faults. 
He had enjoined upon me, with the utmost earnestness and solemnity, not 
to betray his wife, nor leave his children to a blight * * * * With 
such a man as T. T., there is no possible salvation for any that depend 
up >n him. With a strong nature, he does not know how to govern it, * 
* * * There is no use in trying further. I have a strong feeling upon 
me, and it brings great peace, that I am spending my last Sunday, and 
preaching my last seimon. 

The hopelessness of spirit which the foregoing letter por- 
trayed on the part of its writer, led Mr. Tilton to reconsider 
the question of defending himself at the cost of producing mis- 
ery to Mr. Beeeher ; which determination by Mr. Tilton to allow 
the prevailing calumnies against himself to go unanswered, 
was further strengthened by the following note received by 
him two days thereafter, from the office-editor of Mr. Beecher's 
journal : Oliver Johnson : — 

128 East Twelfth Street, June 4th, 1873. 
My Dear Theodore : 

May I tell you frankly that when I saw you last, you did not seem to 
me to he the noble young man who inspired my warm affection so many 
years ago. You were yielding to an act which I could not help thinking 
would be dishonorable and perfidious ; and although it is easy for me to 
make every allowance for the circumstances that had wrought you to such 
a frenzy, I was dreadfully shocked. My dear Theodore, let me as an old 
frien 1, whose heart is wrung by your terrible suffering and sorrow, ' tell 
you that you were then acting ignobly, and that you can never have true 
peace of mind till you conquer yourself and dismiss all purpose and thought 
of injuring the man who has wronged you. Of all the promises our lips 
can frame, none are so sacred as those we make to those who have injured 
us, and whom we have professed to forgive ; and they are sacred just in 
proportion as their violation would work injury to those to whom they are 
made. You cannot paint too blackly the wrongs you have suffered. On 
that point, I make no plea in abatement ; but I beg you to remember that 
nothing can change the law which makes forgiveness noble and God-like. 

I have prayed for you night and day, with strong crying and tears, 
beseeching God to restrain you from wronging yourself by violating your 
solemn engagements. To-night I am happy in the thought that you have 
been preserved from committing the act which I so much dreaded. 

In a letter written by Mr. Beeeher, in order to be shown to 
Mr. Tilton, Mr. Beeeher spoke as follows : — 



272 SHARP, BAGGED EDGE OF ANXIETY. 

Mr. Beecher to Mr. Moulton. 
No man can see the difficulties that environ me, unless he stands where 
I do. To say that I have a Church on my hands is simple enough, but to 
have the hundreds and thousands of men pressing me, each one with his 
keen suspicion, or anxiety, or zeal; to see the tendencies which, if not 
stopped would break out into a ruinous defence of me ; to stop them with- 
out seeming to do it ; to prevent any one questioning me ; to meet and 
allay prejudices against T. which had their beginnings years before ; to keep 
serene as if I was not alarmed or disturbed ; to be cheerful at home and 
among friends when I was suffering the torments of the damned ; to pass 
sleepless nights often, and yet to come up fresh and fair for Sunday — all 
this may be talked about, but the real thing cannot be understood from 
the outside, nor its wearing and grinding on the nervous system." 

In still another letter, written for the same purpose as the 
above, Mr. Beecher said : 

Mr. Beecher to Mr. Moulton. 

" If my destruction would place him (Mr. Tilton) all right, that shall 
not stand in the way, I am willing to step down and out. No one can offer 
more than that. That I do offer. . Sacrifice me without hesitation, if you 
can clearly see your way to his safety and happiness thereby. In one 
point of view, I could desire the sacrifice on my part. Nothing can possi- 
bly be so bad as the power of great darkness in which I spend much of my 
time. I look upon death as sweeter far than any friend I have in the 
world. Life would be pleasant if I could see that reburilt which is shat- 
tered. But to live on the sharp and ragged edge of anxiety, remorse, fear, 
despair, and yet to put on an appearance of serenity and happiness, cannot 
be endured much longer. I am well nigh discouraged. If you cease to 
trust me, to love me, I am alone. I do not know any person in the world 
to whom I could go." 

Mr. Tilton yielded to the above-quoted and other similar letters, and 
made no defence of himself against the public odium which- attached to him 
unjustly. 

XVII. That the marriage union between Mr. and Mrs. Tilton, 
until broken by Mr. Beecher, was of more than common har- 
mony, affection, and mutual respect. Their home and household 
were regarded for years, by all their guests, as an ideal home. 
As evidence of the feeling and spirit which this wife enter- 
tained for her husband, up to the time of her corruption by Mr. 
Beecher, the following letters by Mrs. Tilton, written only a 
few months before her loss of honor, will testify : 



ELIZABETH'S LOVE FOR THEODORE. 273 

Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

Tuesday morning, January 28th, 1868. 
My Beloved : 

Don't you know the peculiar phase of Christ's character as lover is pre- 
cious to me, because of my consecration and devotion to you? I learn to 
love you from my love to Him. I have learned to love Him from my love 
to you. I couple you with Him. Nor do I feel it one whit irreverent. 
And as every day I adorn myself, consciously, as a bride to meet her 
bridegroom, in like manner, I lift imploring hands that my soul's love may 
be prepared. I, with the little girls after you led us with overflowing eyes 
and hearts, consecrated ourselves to our work and to you. My waking 
thoughts last night were of you. My rising thoughts this morning were of 
you. God sustain us, and help us both to keep our vows. 
Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

Saturday Evening, Feb. 1st, 1868. 
Oh ! well I know, as far as 1 am capable, I love you. Now to keep this 
fire high and generous, is the ideal before me. I am only perfectly con- 
tented and restful when you are with me. These latter months I have 
thought, looked, and yearned for the hour when you would be at home, 
with longings unutterable. 

Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

Monday, Feb. 3d, 1868.— 9 o'clock A. M. 
"What may I bring to my beloved, this bright morning ? A large, throb- 
bing heart full of love, single in its aim and purpose to bless and cheer 
him ? Is it acceptable, sweet one ? 

Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

Monday Morning, February 24th, 1868. 
Do you wonder that I couple your love, your presence and relation to 
me, with the Savior's ? I lift you up sacredly, and keep you in that ex- 
alted and holy place where I reverence, respect, and love with the fervency 
of my whole being. 

Whatever capacity I have, I offer it to you. The closing lines of your 
letter are these : "I shall hardly venture again upon a great friendship — 
your love shall be enough for the remaining days." That word " enough," 
seems a stoicism on which you have resolved to live your life — but I pray 
God he will supply you with friendships pure, and with wifely love which 
your great heart demands, withholding not Himself as the Chief Love 
which consumeth not, though it burn, and whose effects are always perfect 
rest and peace. 

Again, in one of your letters, you close with: "Faithfully yours." 
12* 



274 SEE NEVER SOUGHT A SEPARATION. 

That word faithful means a great deal. Yes, darling, I believe it, trust it, 
and give you the same surety with regard to myself. I am faithful to you, 
have been always, and shall forever be, world without end. Call not this 
assurance impious ; there are some things we know. Blessed be God ! 

Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

Home, February 28th, 1868. > 
Saturday Evening. ) 
Ah ! did man ever love so grandly as my Beloved ? Other friend- 
ships, public affairs, all "fall to naught" when I come to you. Though 
you are in Decorah, to-night, yet I have felt your love, and am very grate- 
ful for it. I had not received a line since Monday, and was so hungry and 
lonesome that I took out all your letters and indulged myself as at a feast, 
but without satiety. And now I long to pour out, into your heart, of my 
abundance. I am conscious of three jets to the fountain of my soul — to 
the Great Lover and yourself — to whom as one I am eternally wedded ; my 
children, and the dear friends who trust and love me. I do not want 
another long separation. While we are in the flesh, let us abide to- 
gether. 

Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Tilton. 

Wednesday, Morn., March, 1868. 
Oh! how almost perfectly could I minister to you, this Winter — my 
heart glows so perpetually ! I am conscious of great inward awakening 
toward you. If I live, I shall teach my children to legin their loves, 
where now I am. I cannot conceive of anything more delicious than a 
life consecrated to a faithful love. I insist that I miss you more than you 
do me ; but soon I shall see my beloved. 

Your Own Dear Wife. 

In addition to the above, many other letters Iry Mrs. Tilton 
to her husband prior to her corruption b}^ Mr. Beecher, served 
to show that a Christian wife, loving her husband to the extreme 
degree above set forth, could only have been swerved from the 
path of rectitude by artful and powerful persuasions, clothed 
in the phrases of religion, and enforced by strong appeals from 
her chief Christian teacher and guide. 

XVIII. That the story purporting to explain Mr. Beecher's 
apology as having been written because he had offended Mr. 
Tilton by engaging his wife in the project of a separation from 
her husband, is false ; as will be seen b} r the following letter 
written only three days after the date of the apology : 



MRS. TILTON CIRCULATES THE SCANDAL. 275 

Mrs. Tilton to Mr. Moulton. 

171 Livingston Strekt, Brooklyn, ) 

January, 4th, 1871. > 
Mr. Francis D. Noulton: 

My Dear Friend — In regard to your question whether I have ever 
sought a separation from my husband, I indignantly deny that such was 
ever the fact, as 1 have denied it a hundred times before. The story that I 
wanted a separation was a deliberate falsehood coined by my poor mother, 
who said she would bear the responsibility of this and other statements she 
might make, and communicated to my husband's enemy, Mrs. H. W. 
Beecher, and by her communicated to Mr. Bowen. I feel outraged by the 
whole proceeding, and am now suffering in consequence more than I am 
able to bear. I am yours, very truly, 

.J Elizabeth K. Tilton. 

XIX. That during the first week in January, 1871, a few 
days after the apology was written, Mr. Beecher communicated 
to Mr. Tilton, through Mr. Moulton, an earnest wish that he 
(Mr. Tilton) would take his family to Europe and reside there 
for a term of years, at Mr. Beecher's expense. Similar offers 
have been since repeated by Mr. Beecher to Mr. Tilton through 
the same channel. A message of kindred tenor was brought 
from Mr. Beecher to Mr. Tilton, last summer, by Mr. F. B. 
Carpenter, as will appear from the following affidavit : 

Homer, N. Y., July 18th, 1874. 

On Sunday, June 1st, 1873, two days after the surreptitious publication 
of the tripartite covenant between H. W. Beecher, H. C. Bowen, and 
Theodore Tilton, I walked with Mr. Beecher from Plymouth Church to 
the residence of Mr. P. D. Moulton, in Remsen street. On the way to 
Mr. Moulton's house, Mr. Beecher said to me if Mr. Tilton would stand 
by him he would share his fame, his fortune, and everything he possessed 
witb him (Tilton). Francis B. Carpenter. 

Sworn to and subscribed before me, this 18th day of July, 1874. 

William T. Hickok, Notary Public. 

Mr. Carpenter, in communicating to Mr. Tilton the above 
affidavit, says, in a letter accompanying it : — 

I have no hesitation in giving you the statement, as I understood at the 
time that it was for me to repeat in substance to you, and I did so repeat 
it. It was at this interview Mr. Beecher spoke to me of his apology to 
you. 

The charge that Mr. Tilton ever attempted to levy black- 



276 SHE HAD PANGS OF CONSCIENCE. 

mail on Mr. Beecher, is false ; on the contrary, Mr. Tilton has 
always resented every attempt by Mr. Beecher to put him under 
pecuniary obligation. 

XX. Not long after the scandal became public, Mrs. Til- 
ton wrote on a slip of paper, and left on her husband's writing- 
desk, the following words : — 

" Now that the exposure has come, ray whole nature revolts to join with 
you or standing with you. 

Through the influence of Mr. Beecher's friends, the opinion 
has long been diligently propagated that the scandal was due 
to Mr. Tilton, and that the alleged facts were malicious inven- 
tions b}' him to revenge himself for supposed and imaginary 
wrongs done to him by Mr. Beecher. Many words w T ere 
spoken from time to time by Mrs. Tilton to the praise and 
eulogy of Mr. Beecher, which, being extensively quoted through 
his congregation, heightened the impression that Mr. Tilton was 
Mr. Beecher's slanderer, Mrs. Tilton being herself the authority 
for the statement. In this way Mrs. Tilton and one of her 
relatives have been the chief causes of the great difficulty of 
suppressing the scandal. The}^ have had a habit of saying, 
u Mr. Tilton believes such and such things ; " and their naming 
of these things by way of denial has been a mischievous way 
of circulating them broadcast. In this way, Mr. Tilton has 
been made to appear a defamer, whereas he has made every 
effort in his power to suppress the injurious tales which he has 
been charged with propagating. On all occasions, he has sys- 
tematically referred to his wife in terms favorable to her 
character. 

Further, Mr.. Tilton would not have communicated to the 
Committee the facts contained in this statement, except for the 
perverse course of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. 
Elizabeth R. Tilton, to degrade and destixy him in the public 
estimation. 

XXI. That one evening, about two weeks after the publica- 
tion of Mr. Tilton's letter to Dr. Bacon, Mrs. Tilton, on 
coining home at a late hour, informed her husband that she had 
been visited at a friend's house b} T a committee of investigation, 
and had given sweeping evidence acquitting Mr. Beecher of 
every charge. This was the first intimation which Mr. Tilton 
received that any such Committee was then in existence. 
Furthermore, Mrs. Tilton stated that she had done this by 
advice of a lawyer, w r hom Mr. Beecher had sent to her, and 



IN CONCLUSION. 277 

who, in advance of her appearing before the Committee, 
arranged with her the questions and answers which were to 
constitute her testimon\ T in Mr. Beecher's behalf. On the next 
day, after giving this untrue testimony before the Committee, 
she spent many hours of extreme suffering from pangs of con- 
science at having testified falsely. She expressed to her hus- 
band the hope that God would forgive her perjury, but that the 
motive was to save Mr. Beecher and her husband, and also to 
remove all reproach from the cause of religion. She also ex- 
pressed similar contrition to one of her intimate friends. 

XXII. Finally, that in addition to the foregoing facts and 
evidences, other confirmations could be adduced, if needed, to 
prove the following recapitulated statement, namely, that the 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, as pastor and friend of Mr. Tilton 
and his family, trespassed upon the sanctity of friendship and 
hospitality in a long endeavor to seduce Mrs. Elizabeth R. 
Tilton ; that by the artful use of his priestly authority with 
her, she being his pupil in religion, he accomplished this seduc- 
tion ; that for a period of a year and a half, or thereabout, he 
maintained criminal intercourse with her, overcoming her pre- 
vious modest scruples against such conduct b}" investing it 
with a false justification as sanctioned by love and religion ; 
that he then participated in a conspiracy to degrade Theodore 
Tilton before the public, by loss of place, business and repute ; 
that he abused Mr. Tilton's forgiveness and pledge of pro- 
tection by thereafter authorizing a series of measures b} r Ply- 
mouth Church having for their object the putting of a stigma 
upon Mr. Tilton before the Church, and also before an Eccle- 
siastical Council, insomuch that the moderator of that Council, 
interpreting these acts by Mr. Beecher and his Church, declared 
that they showed Mr. Beecher to be the most magnanimous of 
men, and Mr. Tilton to be a knave and dog ; that when Mr. 
Tilton thereafter, not in malice but for self-protection, wrote a 
letter to Dr. Bacon, alluding therein to an offence and apology 
by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, he (Mr. Beecher) defiantly 
appointed a committee of his Church members to inquire into 
the injury done him by Mr. Tilton by the aforesaid allusion, 
and implying that he (Mr. Beecher) had never been the author 
of such offence and apology, and that Mr. Tilton was a slan- 
derer ; that to make this inquiry bear grievously against Mr. 
Tilton, he (Mr. Beecher) previously connived with Mrs. E. R. 
Tilton to give false testimony in his (Mr. Beecher's) behalf; 
that Mr. Beecher's course toward Mr. Tilton and family has at 



278 TILTON'S LETTERS. 

last resulted in the open destruction of Mr. Tilton's household 
and home, and in the desolation of his heart and life. 

Theodore Tilton. 

Sworn to before me this 20th day of Jury, 1874. 

Theo. Burgmyer, Notary Public. 
Gentlemen of the Committee : 

Having laid before you the above sworn statement, which I 
have purposely restricted to relations of Mr. Beecher with Mrs. 
Tilton onl} r , and with no other person or persons, I wish to add 
an explanation due to yourselves. 

In the Golden Age, lately edited by me, a suggestion was 
made, not with my knowledge or consent, that your Committee, 
in order to be justly constituted, should comprise, in addition 
to the six members appointed by Mr. Beecher, six others, ap- 
pointed b}' myself. 

To no such proposal would I have consented, for I have 
never wanted any tribunal whatever for the investigation of 
this subject. Neither your Committee, as at present consti- 
tuted, nor an enlarged Committee on the plan just mentioned, 
nor any other Committee, of anj r kind, could in and of itself 
have persuaded or compelled me to lay before jou the facts 
contained in the preceding statement. Distinctly be it under- 
stood that these facts had not been evoked by 3-our Committee 
because of any authority which I recognize in you as a tribunal 
of inquiry. Nor would they have been yielded up to any 
other Committee or Board of Reference, however constituted 
(except a Court of law) ; but, on the contrary, I have divulged 
the above statement because of the openly -published demand 
for it, made directly to me by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 
aided and abetted by Mrs. Elizabeth R. Tilton. These two 
parties — these alone, and not your Committee — have b}' their 
action prevailed with me. No other authorities or influences 
(except a Court of law) could have been powerful enough to 
have extorted from me the above disclosure. For the sake of 
one of these parties, gladly would I have continued to hide 
these facts in the future, as I have incessantly striven to do in 
the past. But, by the joint action of Mr. Beecher and Mrs. 
Tilton, I can withhold the truth only at the price of perpetual 
infamy to my name, in addition to the penalty which I already 
suffer in the destruction of a home once as pleasant as any in 
which you yourselves dwell. 

Respectfully, Theodore Tilton. 

The surreptitious publication of this document that Mr. T. 



TILTON TO MA VEHIGK. 279 

had assured the committee would not be published by him, 
naturally created indignation on the part of Mr. Tilton, and 
he at once took the course indicated in the following card, pub- 
lished in the Brooklyn Argus on the 22d: 

It is a time for every person connected with this scandal to 
take the just responsibility that belongs to him — I want to 
take mine. And, in order that I may take it fully, I herewith 
print a note which I have this morning received from my friend 
Theodore Tilton : 

Wednesday, July 22. 
My Dear Maverick : 

From no other person 'save cither yourself, as my copyist, or from the 
committee's short-hand writer, or from some member of the committee, 
could my sworn statement have got into print. My heart is bowed and 
bleeding at seeing these facts spread before the world. Tell me how 
could you have taken such a fearful, dreadful, horrible responsibility with- 
out consulting me in advance ? There now remains no possibility of 
peace or silence — nothing but everlasting woe. Explain yourself — you 
must do it, both to me and to the public. Yours in grief, 

Theodore Tilton. 

I will answer, not only to Mr. Tilton, but to the public. 

I was the groomsman of Mr. Tilton at his marriage in 1855, 
and I have been his friend ever since. Last Saturday, feeling 
that I might render him some service in the preparation of his 
defense to the committee, I called at his home. He was wearied 
and worn with copying papers, saying that he must do it him- 
self, for he could not trust the facts to an amanuensis. I then 
offered to copy for him, in a clear round hand, his statement, 
that he might get a chance to rest and sleep. In doing this 
work for an old friend I became so thoroughly struck with the 
perfection of his defense that I felt sure it would carry the 
public, and told him so. He then replied that he never meant 
the public to see it, and it was in vain that I attempted to con- 
vince him of the necessity of its publication. As one of his 
stanch friends, loving and knowing him to be a long-abused 
man, and that he still shrunk from hurting others in order to 
shield himself, I resolved that this defense should be published, 
and I published it. I did so without his knowledge or con- 
sent. And I did right — and stand by the act, as an act of jus- 
tice to a man who has been wronged, and to a community that 
has a right to know all the facts. 

Augustus Maverick. 

Brooklyn, July 22d, 1874. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ALLEGED CROSS-EXAMINATION OF MR. TILTON AND HIS DENIAL 
OF THE WORDS PUT INTO HIS MOUTH — HENRY WARD BEECH- 
ER'S DEFENCE — HIS RELATIONS TO MRS. TILTON WERE ONLY 
SUCH AS COULD BE ENTERTAINED BY A PURE MINDED 
WOMAN, BUT HE DID CAUSE A SOCIAL CATASTROPHE — MRS. 
TILTON'S SWEEPING DENIAL — HER OWN GRAPHIC STORY OF 
HER DOMESTIC TROUBLE, HER RELATIONS TO AND AFFECTION 
FOR HER PASTOR — MR. TILTON INTERVIEWED — HIS THREAT TO 
DRAW A TWO-EDGED SWORD, AND OFFERS TO GO INTO COURT, 
EITHER AS PLAINTIFF OR DEFENDANT — GENERAL BUTLER'S 
ADVICE, AND A SIGNIFICANT HERALD EDITORIAL — MR. 
JAMES M'DERMOTT DECLARES HE HOLDS DAMAGING TESTI- 
MONY AND DOCUMENTS — EVIDENCE IN EXISTENCE THAT THE 
DECEASED WIFE OF HENRY C. BO WEN WAS DISHONORED. 

On July 22d, Mr. Tilton was again before the committee on 
cross-examination by Gen. Tracy, counsel for Mr. Beecher. 
The Brooklyn Eagle, which throughout the controversy had 
shown a bitter partizan hostility to Mr. Tilton, and even threat- 
ened editorially that he might be driven from the city, pub- 
lished the following as the cross-examination : — 

Mr. Tilton was quietly asked by Mr. Tracy as to his relations 
with a certain woman, not Mrs. Victoria Woodhull. Had he 
not at certain specified times and in certain alleged places been 
guilty of the offense with that woman, of which Mr. Tilton al- 
leges Mr. Beecher to have been guilty With Elizabeth Tilton. 

To the asking of this question Mr. Tilton manifested the 
greatest indignation. He did not exactly rage, but he de- 
nounced the implication in the loftiest terms. He was dramatic. 
He put himself upon a very high pedestal of dignity. 

280 



TILTON CROSS-EXAMINED. 2S1 

Mr. Tracy then asked Mr. Tilton as to his private relations 
with' another woman, naming her. 

To this Mr. Tilton replied very calmly. He was not wounded 
in that place. 

Mr. Tracy then asked Mr. Tilton if he had ever held any 
improper relation or criminal intercourse with a third woman, 
naming that woman. 

Mr. Tilton thereupon again raged and fumed, and expressed 
his indignation in terms of theatrical and almost tragic import. 

Mr. Tracy then asked Mr. Tilton if he had not had improper 
relations with another woman, the sister of the last one re- 
ferred to ; if he did not take her with him on one certain oc- 
casion to Winsted, Conn., when he delivered a lecture there, 
and if he and that woman did not then and there occupy the 
same room with this woman. Mr. Tracy indicated also that 
his question was founded upon charges to that effect, made by 
the clerk and proprietor of the hotel in which Mr. Tilton and 
this woman are alleged to have stayed. 

Mr. Tilton again raged with indignation. He made, as he 
does in answering nearly every important question put to him, 
a speech. He declared that if this form of warfare was to be 
kept up he himself would do some talking. If names were to 
be called in that way he would have some names to mention. 
The thing should not end in that way. 

In fine, Mr. Tilton put himself on the record as threatening 
to expose other parties, who, as he insinuated, had been guilty 
of improper conduct at some time or other, and in some place 
or other. 

Mr. Tracy, said: Mr. Tilton, you have charged your wife 
with having committed adultery with Mr. Beecher. Now, 
answer this question. Did you ever commit adultery? 

Mr. Tilton (running his hands through his locks, straighten- 
ing them out into their longest extent) — Sir! Talk to me as 
one gentleman talks to another. I decline to be questioned 
in that way. 

Mr. Tracy — I ask you the question squarely. It is a question 
easy to be understood, and you can see that it is a question es- 
sential to this case. You have stated that you had a beautiful 
home until Mr. Beecher corrupted your wife. The Committee 
want to know what sort of a home you made for your wife; 
whether or not you brought other women to your house and 
held improper relations there with them. You see it is 
essential to know what sort of a peaceful and happy home you 



282 HE DESPISES THE CHURCH. 

made it for her before Mr. Beech er, as you say, corrupted her 
and ruined that home. Now, Mr. Tilton, I put the question 
squarely to you, did you ever commit adultery? 

Mr. Tilton (striking a Tiltonian attitude and stretching out 
his finger a'ter the manner of Nathan to David) — Mr. Tracy 
did yon ever commit adultery? 

Mr. Tracy — When I shall have charged my wife with com- 
mitting adultery it will be time for you to ask that question. 

Mr. Tilton — Well, sir, I decline to answer that question. 
It is an insult to me, sir! If I have ever had any intimacy 
with ladies I would be a scoundrel sir to call their names! 

Mr. Tracy — Well, under that head we will suppose that you 
have already named your wife. 

Mr. Tilton again rose to an indignation pitch, and refused to 
answer. 

Mr. Tracy — Mr. Tilton, do you know that your intimacy with 
public women greatly disturbed Mrs. Tilton, and made her life 
unhappy ? 

Mr. Tilton (with another attitude) — What do you mean, sir, 
to talk to me about public women ? 

A Member of the Committee— ^Mr. Tilton, Mr. Tracy does 
not mean public women in an odious sense. He means 
reformers. 

Mr. Tilton (coming down to his usual manner again — 0,yes, 
Elizabeth was very much annoyed that I ever should associate 
with such persons. She said they were not sound in theology; 
they were heretics and exercised bad influence on me. She 
talked very much about it and always opposed it. " She hated," 
she said, "such women as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mrs. 
Woodhull." She said " they were on the wrong side always." 
She feared I was going to be led astray. 

In another connection Mr. Tilton said: One great grievance 
of my wife was that I was not a clergyman. Thanh God, I am 
not a minister! I want you to put it down, Mr. Stenographer, 
I despise the church, I despise creeds. Not but that I am a 
religious man though. I am a religious man. I love God, but 
I despise the church. I saw the cowardice of the church in the 
great anti-slavery fight, and it has always been false. But Eliz- 
abeth has always had a reverence for the church, and she has 
been greatly disturbed because I could not receive the doctrine 
of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. I could not receive 
it. I had to reject it, and it disturbed her very much. It is a 
sort of keystone to her whole faith that Christ is_divine. and. 



BE QA VE IIER HIS OPINION. 283 

my refusal to believe it has been the subject of many conversa- 
tions and many of her prayers. She spends whole hours on her 
knees in prayer. A whiter souled woman does not live to-day 
than Elizabeth Tilton! 

In another connection Mr. Tilton admitted that "my com- 
plaining friend," to whom one of his celebrated letters which 
goes under that name was addressed had no existence what- 
ever. It was. he said, a device of his to quiet down the scan- 
dal, "although Elizabeth told me at the time that it would 
make it all the worse." 

During the examination on Tuesday Mr. Tilton stated facts 
which prove incontestably that he was himself the sole inspira- 
tion of the Woodhull scandal, and that he gave Mrs. Wood- 
hull all the alleged facts on which her exposure was founded. 
Among other things, in answer to the question whether he had 
said anything to Woodhull reflecting on the integrity of Beecher 
before Woodhull published her scandal Tilton said: "0 yes, I 
gave her my opinion of him very freely." 

It has also come to light that Tilton did his best to induce 
Beecher to preside over the Woodhull woman's meeting, and 
used as one inducement the necessity of conciliating Mrs. Wood- 
hull, who, he said, was in possession of damaging rumors con- 
cerning him, and wouid possibly use them against him. He 
told Beecher that he had better look out, or Woodhull would 
injure him. 

With reference to but one action in presiding over that meet- 
ing, Tilton says that he reached the hall only ten minutes be- 
fore the meeting commenced; Woodhull was indignant because 
there was not a man there who dared to introduce her, and 
Tilton said he dared do it and would do it. He said he did 
not know what her utterances would be, although he might 
have known, as the proofs of her address were in his office; he 
had not read them. The most extreme things she said, how- 
ever, w r ere not in her manuscript, but were what he calls 
" ebullitions of the moment." The following question was put 
to Tilton by Mr. Tracy: 

Mr. Tilton, have you any evidence of Mr. Beecher's adultery 
except what you say your wife told you ? 

Tilton — I have none whatever. 

It also appears that one of Mr. Beecher's letters, from which 
Mr. Tilton extracts a few lines of doubtful meaning, is over a 
column long. Tilton has twice promised to produce it, but has 
not yet done so. He may produce it this afternoon, when his 



281 BEECHER'S DENIAL. 

cross-examination will be resumed. The committee want to 
know what; is in the whole letter. It is fair to presume that 
Tilton has taken from it only such parts as suit his purposes. 

Simultaneous with this cross-examination the denial of Mr. 
Beecher to the charges appeared. It reads thus: — 

I do not purpose at this time a detailed examination of the 
remarkable statement of Theodore Tilton, made before the 
Committee of Investigation, and which appeared in the Brook- 
lyn Argus of July 21st, 1874. I recognize the many reasons 
which make it of transcendent importance to myself, the 
Church, and the cause of public morality, that I shall give a 
full answer to the charges against me. But, having requested 
the Committee of Investigation to search this matter to the 
bottom, it is to them that I must look for my vindication. 
But I cannot delay for an hour to defend the reputation of 
Mrs. Elizabeth K. Tilton, upon whose name, in connection 
with mine, her husband has attempted to pour shame. One 
less deserving of such disgrace I never knew. From childhood, 
she has been under my eye, and, since reaching womanhood, 
she has had my sincere admiration and affection. I cherish 
for her a pure feeling, such as a gentleman might honorably 
offer to a Christian woman, and which she might receive and 
reciprocate without moral scruple. I reject with indignation 
every imputation which reflects upon her honor or my own. 
My regard for Mrs. Tilton was perfectly well known to my 
family. When serious difficulties sprang up in her household, 
it was to my wife that she resorted for counsel; and both of us, 
acting from sympathy, and, as it subsequently appeared, with- 
out full knowledge, gave unadvised counsel, which tended to 
harm. I have no doubt that Mr. Tilton found that his wife's 
confidence and reliance upon my judgment had greatly in- 
creased, while his influence had diminished, in Consequence of 
a marked change in his religious and social views which were 
taking place during those years. Her mind was greatly exer- 
cised lest her children should be harmed by views which she 
deemed vitally f ilse and dangerous. I was suddenly and rude- 
ly aroused to the reality of impending danger by the disclosure 
of* domestic distress, of sickness perhaps unto death, of the like- 
lihood of separation, and the scattering of a family every mem- 
ber of which I had tenderly loved. The effect upon me of the 
discovery of the state of Mr.Tilton's feelings, and the condition 
of his family, surpassed in sorrow and excitement anything that 



ABSURDITY OF TILTON'S CHARGE. 2S5 

I had ever experienced in my life. That my presence, influ- 
ence, and counsel had brought to a beloved family sorrow and 
alienation, gave (in my then state of mind) a poignancy to my 
suffering which I hope no other man may ever feel. Even to 
be suspected of having offered, under the privileges of a pecu- 
liarly sacred relation, an indecorous word to a wife and mother, 
could not but deeply wound any one who is sensitive to the 
honor of womanhood. There are peculiar reasons for alarm in 
this case on other grounds, inasmuch as I was then subject to 
certain malignant rumors, and a flagrant outbreak in this fami- 
ly would bring upon them an added injury derived from these 
shameless falsehoods. 

Believing at the time that my presence and counsels had 
tended, however unconsciously, to produce a social catastro- 
phe, represented as imminent, I gave expression to my feelings 
in an interview with a mutual friend, not in cold and cautious 
self-defending words, but eagerly, taking blame upon myself, 
and pouring out my heart to my friend in the strongest lan- 
guage, overburdened with the exaggerations of impassioned 
sorrow. Had I been the evil man Mr. Tilton now represents, 
I should have been calmer and more prudent. It was my hor- 
ror of the evil imputed that filled me with morbid intensity at 
the very shadow of it. Not only was my friend affected gener- 
ously, but he assured me that such expressions, if conveyed to 
Mr. Tilton, would soothe wounded feelings, allay anger, and 
heal the whole trouble. He took down sentences and frag- 
ments of what I had been saying, to use them as a mediator. 
A full statement of the circumstances under which this memo- 
randum was made, I shall give to the Investigating Commit- 
tee. That these apologies were more than ample to meet the 
facts of the case, is evident, in that they were accepted, that 
our intercourse resumed its friendliness, that Mr. Tilton sub- 
sequently ratified it in writing, and that he has continued for 
four years, and until within two weeks, to live with his wife. 
Is it conceivable, if the original charge had been what it is 
now alleged, that he would have condoned the offence, not 
only with the mother of his children, but with him whom he 
believed to have wronged them ? The absurdity as well as 
falsity of this story is apparent, when it is considered that Mr. 
Tilton now alleges that he carried this guilty secret of his 
wife's infidelity for six months, locked up in his own breast, 
and that then he divulged it to me, only that there might be a 
reconciliation with me ! Mr. Tilton has since, in every form 



286 THE SADDEST ACT OF U1S LIFE. 

of language, and to a multitude of witnesses, orally, in written 
statements, and in printed documents, declared his faith in his 
wife's purity. After the reconciliation of Mr. Tilton with 
me, every consideration of propriety and honor demanded that 
the family trouble should he kept in that seclusion which do- 
mestic affairs have a right to claim as a sanctuary; and to that 
seclusion it was determined that it should he confined. 

Every line and word of my private and confidential letters 
which have been published is in harmony with the statements 
which I now make. My published correspondence on this 
subject comprises but two elements — the expression of my 
grief, and that of my desire to shield the honor of a pure and 
innocent woman. I do not propose to analyze and contest at 
this time the extraordinary paper of Mr. Tilton ; but there are 
two allegations which I cannot permit to pass without special 
notice. They refer to the only two incidents which Mr. Tilton 
pretends to have witnessed personally — the one an alleged 
scene in my house while looking over engravings, and the 
other a chamber scene in his own house. His statements con- 
cerning these are absolutely false. Nothing of the kind ever 
occurred, nor any semblance of any such thing. They are 
now brought to my notice for the first time. 

To every statement which connects me dishonorably with 
Mrs. Elizabeth K. Tilton, or which in any wise would impugn 
the honor and purity of this beloved Christian woman, I give 
the most explicit, comprehensive, and solemn denial. 

Henry Ward Beechee. 

Brooklyn July 22d, 1874. 

This was supplemented upon the following day by the em- 
phatic denial of the charges by Mrs. Tilton in these words 
addressed to the public : — 

To pick up anew the sorrows of the last ten years, the stings 
and pains I had daily schooled myself to bury and forgive, 
makes this imperative duty, as called forth by the malicious 
statement of my husband, the saddest act of my life. Beside, 
my thought of following the Master contradicts this act of my 
pen, and a sense of the perversion of my life-faith almost com- 
pels me now to stand aside, till God, Himself, delivers. 

Yet I see in this wanton act an urgent call and privilege 
from which I shrink not. To reply in detail to the twenty- 
two articles of arraignment, I shall not attempt at present. 



.. CATHARINE'S CHARACTER. 287 

Yet if called upon to testify to each and all of them, I shall 
not hesitate to do so. Suffice it for my purpose now that I 
reply to one or more of the most glowing charges. 

Touching the feigned sorrow of my husband's compulsory 
revelations, I solemnly avow that long before the Woodhull 
publication, I knew him, by insinuation and direct statement, 
to have repeated to my very near relative and friend the sub- 
stance of these accusations which shock the moral sense of the 
entire community this day. Many times, when hearing that 
certain persons had spoken ill of him, he has sent me to chide 
them for so doing ; and then and there I learned he had been 
befn-e me with his calumnies against myself, so that I was 
speechless. 

The reiteration in his statement that he had "persistently 
striven to hide" tiiese so-called facts, is utterly false, as his 
hatred to Mr. Bcecher has existed these many years, and the 
determination to ruin Mr. Beecher has been the one aim of 
his life. 

Again, the perfidy with which the holiest love a wife ever of- 
fered has been recklessly discovered in this publication, reaches 
well nigh to sacrilege; and, added to this, the endeavor, like 
the early scandal of Mrs. Woodhull, to make my own words 
condemn me, has no parallel. 

Most conspicuously, my letter quoting the reading of "Grif- 
fith Gaunt." Had Mr. Tilton read the pure character of Cath- 
erine, he would have seen that I lifted myself beside it— as near 
as any human may affect an ideal. But it was her character, 
and not the incidents of fiction surrounding it, to which I re- 
ferred. Hers w r as no sin of criminal act or thought. 

A like "confession" with hers, I had made to Mr. Tilton in 
telling of my love to my friend and pastor, one year before. 
And I now add that, notwithstanding all misrepresentations 
and anguish of soul, I owe to my acquaintance and friendship 
with Mr. Beecher, as to no other human instrumentality, that 
encouragement in my mental life, and that growth toward the 
Divine nature which enables me to walk daily in a lively hope 
of the life beyond. 

The shameless charges in articles seven, eight and nine are 
fearfully false in each and every particular. 

The letter referred to in Mr. Til ton's tenth paragraph was 
obtained from me by importunity, and by representations that 
it was necessary for him to use in his then pending difficulties 
with Mr. Bowen. I was then sick, nigh unto death, having 



2SS MRS. TILTON DENIES THE CHARGES. 

suffered a miscarriage only four days before. I signed whatever 
lie required, without knowing or understanding its import. 
The paper I have never seen, and do not know what statements 
it contained. 

In charge eighteen, a letter of mine, addressed to Mr. Francis 
Moulton, quoted to prove that I never desired a separation or 
was advised by Mr. or Mrs. Beecher to leave my husband, I 
reply, the letter was of Mr. Tilton's own concocting, which he 
induced me to copy and sign as my own — an act which, in my 
weakness and mistaken thought to help him, I have done too 
often during these unhappy years. 

The implication that the harmony of the home was un- 
broken till Mr. Beecher entered it as a frequent guest and 
friend, is a lamentable satire upon the household where he him- 
self, years before, laid the corner-stone of Free Love, and dese- 
crated its altars up to the time of my departure; so that the 
atmosphere was not only godless, but impure for my children. 
And in this effort and throe of agony, I would fain lift my 
daughters, and all womanhood from the insidious and diabol- 
ical teachings of these latter days. 

His frequent efforts to prove me insane, weak minded, insig- 
nificant, of mean presence, all rank in the category of heart- 
lessness, selfishness and falsehood, having its climax in his 
present endeavor to convince the world that I am or ever have 
been unable to distinguish between an innocent or a guilty 
love. 

In summing up the whole matter,! affirm myself before God 
to be innocent of the crimes laid upon me ; that never have I 
been guilty of adultery with Henry Ward Beecher in thought 
or deed ; nor has he ever offered to me an indecorous or im- 
proper proposal. 

To the further charge that I was led away from my home by 
Mr. Beecher's friends, and by the advice of a lawyer whom 
Mr. Beecher had sent to me, and who, in advance of my ap- 
pearing before the Committee, arranged with me the questions 
and answers which are to constitute my testimony in Mr. 
Beecher's behalf, I answer, that this is again untrue, having 
never seen the lawyer until introduced to him a few moments 
before the arrival of the Committee, by my step-father, Judge 
Morse; and in further reply I submit the following statement 
of my action before the Committee, and the separation from my 
husband. 

The publication of Mr. Tilton's letter in answer to Dr. Ba- 



SHE SEES THEODORE'S BROTHER. 289 

con, I had not known or suspected, when on Wednesday eve- 
ning he brought home the Golden Age, handing it to me to 
read. Looking down its columns I saw, well nigh with blind- 
ing eyes, that he had put into execution the almost daily threat 
of his. life — "that he lived to crush out Mr. Beecher; that the 
God of battles was in him; he had always been Mr. Beecher's 
superior, and all that lay in his path, wife, children or reputa- 
tion, if need be, should fall before this purpose." 

I did not read it. I saw enough without reading. My spirit 
rose within me as never before. 

" Theodore," I said, "tell me what means this quotation 
from Mr. Beecher? Two years ago you came to me at mid- 
night saying: ' Elizabeth, all letters and papers concerning my 
difficulties with Mr. Beecher and Mr. Bowen are burned, de- 
stroyed; now don't you betray me, for I have nothing to de- 
fend myself with.' " 

"Did you believe that ?" said he. 

"I certainly did, implicitly," I said. 

"Well, let me tell you — they all live; not one is destroyed." 

If this was said to intimidate me, it had quite the contrary 
effect. I had never been so fearless, nor seen so clearly before 
with whom I was dealing. 

Coming to me a little later, he said: "I want you to read it; 
you will find it a vindication of yourself. You have not stood 
before the community for five years as you now do. 

Roused still further by the wickedness hid behind so false a 
mask, I replied, " Theodore, understand me, this is the last 
time you call me publicly to walk through this filth. My 
character needs no vindication at this late hour from you. 
There was a time, had you spoken out clearly, truthfully and 
manfully for me, I had been grateful but now I shall speak 
and act for myself. Know also, that if in the future I see a 
scrap of paper referring to any human being, however remote, 
which it seems to me you might use or pervert for your own 
ends, I will destroy it." 

" This means battle on your part, then," said he. 

"Just so far," I replied. 

I write this because these words of mine he has since used 
to my harm. 

The next morning I went to my brother, and told him that 

now / had decided to act in this matter ; that I had been 

treated by my husband as a nonentity from the beginning, a 

play thing, to be used or let alone at will ; that it had always 

13 



290 ' v THEY WERE HAPPY. 

seemed to me I was a party not a little concerned. I then 
showed him a card I bad made for publication. 

He respected the motive, but still advised silence on my part. 
I yielded to him thus far, as to appearing in the public prints; 
but counseling with myself and no other, it occured to me 
that among the brethren of my own communion, I might be 
heard. 

Not knowing of any church committee, I asked the privilege 
of such an interview in the parlors of those who bad always 
been our mutual friends. Mr. and Mrs. Ovington then learn- 
ed, for the first time, that the Committee would meet that 
night and advised me to see those gentlemen, as perhaps the 
goodliest persons I could select. This I accordingly did. 

There, alone, I pleaded the cause of my husband and my 
children, the result being that their hearts were moved in sym- 
pathy for my family — a feeling their pastor had shared for 
years, and for which he was now suffering. 

On going home, I found my husband reading in bed. I 
told him where I had been, and that I did not conceal any- 
thing from him, as his habit was from me. He asked who the 
gentlemen were ; said no more ; rose, dressed himself and bade 
me good-bye forever. 

The midnight following I was awakened by my husband 
standing by my bed. In a very tender, kind voice he said he 
wished to see me. I rose instantly, followed him into his 
room, and sitting on the bed side, he drew me into his lap, 
said "he was proud of me, loved me; that nothing ever gave 
him such real peace and satisfaction as to hear me well spoken 
of; that, meeting a member of the Committee, he had learned 
that he had been mistaken as to my motive in seeing the Com- 
mittee, and had hastened to assure me that he had been 
thoroughly wretched since his rash treatment of me the night 
before," etc. 

Then and there we covenanted sacredly our hearts and lives 
— I most utterly ; renewing my trust in the one human heart I 
loved. 

The next day, how happy we were ! Theodore wrote a state- 
ment, to present to the Committee when they should call upon 
him, to all of which I heartily acceded. This document, God 
knows, was a true history of this affair, completely vindicating 
my honor and the honor of my pastor. In the afternoon he 
left me to show it to his friends. 

He returned home early in the evening, passing the happiest 



" THE END HAS INDEED COME." 201 

hours I had known for years ; renewedly assuring me that there 
was no rest for him, away from me. So in grateful love to 
the dear Father, I slept. Oh, that the end had then come! I 
would not then have received the cruel blow " which made a 
woman mad outright/' 

The next morning he called upon our friends, Mr. and Mrs. 
Ovington, and there, with a shocking bravado, began a wicked 
tirade, adding with oath and violence the shameless slanders 
against Mr. Beecher, of which I now believe him to be the 
author. 

This fearful scene I learned next day. In the afternoon, he 
showed me his invitation from the Committee to meet them 
that evening. I did not then show my hurt — but carried it 
heavily within, but calmly without, all night, till early morn- 
ing. 

Reflection upon this scene at Mr. Ovington's convinced me, 
that, notwithstanding my husband's recent professions to me, 
his former spirit was unchanged; that his declarations of re- 
pentance and affection were only for the purpose of gaining 
my assistance to accomplish his ends in his warfare upon Mr. 
Beecher. In the light of these conclusions, my duty appeared 
plain. 

I rose quietly, and having dressed, roused him only to say 
" Theodore, I will never take another step by your side. The 
end has indeed come ! " 

He followed me to Mrs. Ovington's to breakfast, saying I 
was unduly excited, and that he had been misrepresented per- 
haps — but leaving me determined as before. 

How to account for the change which twenty-four hours 
have been capable of working in his mind, then many years 
past, I leave for the eternities with their mysteries to reveal. 
That he is an unreliable and unsafe guide whose idea of truth- 
loving is self-loving, it is my misfortune in this late, sad hour 
to discover. 

Elizabeth R. Tiltok. 

July 23d, 1874. 

The emphatic denials of both the principal actors in the 
alleged crime, gave the friends of Mr. Beecher a ray of hope, 
and the press, which had with one or two exceptions, treated 
the subject with generous fairness, rejoiced that he had at last 
spoken in defence of a woman who many considered, had been 



292 BLUNDERS OF THE COMMITTEE. 

brutally maligned by one who had occupied her heart and love 
before her fatal visit to the Committee. Yet this was not con- 
sidered sufficient. People said, it is merely the denial of per- 
sons accused, is not sworn to as are the charges. Mr. Beecher 
is chivalrous in thus coming to the rescue of a helpless woman, 
but these denials are not answers. The public in the mean- 
time had not heard from Mr. Tilton ; but the alleged cross- 
examination as given above, and the manifestoes of his wife 
and Mr. Beecher forced him to speak in a semi-official man- 
ner through the Argus, which thus reports him: — 

A gentleman called on Mr. Tilton on Friday, July 24th, at 
his residence in Livingston Street, and asked him if his exam- 
ination before the Committee had been concluded. Mr. Til- 
ton replied that he did not know. He had promised to go 
before the Committee as often as they sent for him. He 
added: — Mr. Tracy and Mr. Hill are directly responsible for 
the misrepresentations of my examination before the Commit- 
tee. Please do not understand that I object, at this juncture, 
to be misrepresented either by the press or by Mr. Beecher's 
counsel, The more I am misrepresented, the more right I 
have to defend myself. Mr. Tracy and Mr. Hill, the counsel 
for Mr. Beecher, already have as little influence with the Com- 
mittee as they have with the public. I have just ground of 
accusation against Mr. Tracy, and have been advised by far 
more eminent counsel than himself, that his course would not 
be sustained if submitted to the Bar. I do not wish to press 
it, because the Committee themselves — or, at least, a few of 
them — are men of too much dignity of character and moral 
integrity to be tossed up and down like a ball on a fountain by 
the gushing leakages of Mr. Tracy and Mr. Hill. The sub- 
stance of the examination up to the present time, so far as I 
am concerned, is briefly this: — General Tracy asked me if I 
committed adultery. I asked General Tracy if he committed 
adultery. But neither General Tracy, nor Mr Hill, nor any- 
body in the Committee, has yet asked nie whether Mr. Beecher 
committed adultery. ****** 

" You think then that they have made blunders" 

Mr. Tilton — "Yes; and they have made one hideous blun- 
der?" 

"What is it?" 

Mr. Tilton — "They have diverted their examination from 



A SWORD WITH TWO EDGES. 293 

the facts at issue, into an inquiry into the names and charac- 
ters of my female acquaintance — particularly those who, as 
writers or speakers on various reforms, have attained eminence 
in public life. The animus of this inquiry was obvious ; its 
design was to associate me with the extreme and radical senti- 
ment against which the conservative class in the community 
are arrayed in large majority. I, myself, did not object to this 
inquiry, though I, myself, would not have begun any such line 
of policy in this case. General Tracy's supreme blunder has 
been, that in instituting an inquiry into the standing of the 
ladies of my acquaintance, he gives me the right to institute, 
a counter inquiry into the standing of the ladies of Mr. 
Beecher's acquaintance. 

I informed the Committee yesterday that I deprecated, such 
a plan of battle, but that if it was forced upon me by the 
Committee's counsels I could draw a sword with two edges to 
their one. If this new aspect which General Tracy flings upon 
the case like a shadow, is to characterize the remainder of the 
controversy, it will be the better for General Tracy's chief 
client that he had never been born. 

Reporter — I perceive that Mr. Tracy questioned you con- 
cerning your acquaintance with Mrs. Woodhull? 

Mr. Tilton — Yes; but Mr. Tracy was careful not to elicit 
the fact that Mr. Beecher's apology addressed to me through 
Mr. Moulton was written half a year before I ever saw the 
face of Mrs. Woodhull. He was careful also not to elicit the 
fact that Mr. Beecher himself had private interviews with 
Mrs. Woodhull, and that lady had taken far more pains 
to associate herself with him and he with her than ever I had 
done. * * 

I wish you would do me the favor to say through the col- 
umns of the Argus, that though I have hitherto declined 
being interviewed concerning my appearance before the Com- 
mittee, and have steadfastly remained silent concerning the 
proceedings in the Committee, yet the above report, coming as 
it does from the Committee's counsel, is an absolute fabrication. 
I told the Committee distinctly that Mr. Beecher had confessed 
his adultery to me; that he had confessed it to Mr. Moulton; 
that he had confessed it to other persons whom I named, and, 
furthermore, I give the names of several persons who for the 
last four years have been perfectly well aware that Mr. Moulton's 
entire connection with this case from beginning to end, has 
been based on the one and only corner-stone of Mr. Beecher's 



29tt WILLING TO GO TO THE COURTS. 

criminality. I ask that all these persons be produced before 
the committee. I ask, futhermore, for the privilege of being 
present to cross-examine Mr. Beecher and the other witnesses. 
I still further suggested that the case had come to be of such 
magnitude that it would be better for the Committee to dis- 
miss this informal examination in which no one but myself 
has thus far spoken under oath, and adjourn to meet in Court. 
I expressed a willingness to be sued for libel, or to be put in 
any other way before a tribunal which could compel witnesses 
to testify under oath, and which could punish perjury with 
the State Prison. If this case, with all the facts which lie 
behind it, revealed and unrevealed, were now before a Criminal 
Court instead of a voluntary committee, and if Mr. Beecher's 
printed statement had been made under oath, subject to cross- 
questioning and overthrow, he would indeed be compelled to 
" step down and out." I feel at liberty to speak freely, because 
Mr. Beecher's counsel have falsified me to the world, and I 
have no recourse but to smite them in the face. 

[It is proper for a due understanding of the above expressed 
willingness of Mr. Tilton to go into court either as a defendant 
or complainant, that we should say that for several days pre- 
vious to this publication, General Benjamin F. Butler had been 
in the city as the legal adviser of Mr. Tilton, and had recom- 
mended such a course as the most effective way of settling the 
matter by fixing the guilt upon the accused, or vindicating 
him from the astounding charges made by Mr. Tilton. On 
the following day a significant editorial suggesting this course 
appeared in the World.] We make some extracts : — 

" The time has passed for concealment, subterfuge or expia- 
tion — nay even for secret investigations by irresponsible church 
committees. Ever since the publication of the letter of Mr. 
Tilton to Dr. Bacon, compromise or peace has been impossible. 
Mr. Beecher could never rest under that letter. That was the 
real challenge to war — a challenge that came from Mr. Tilton, 
who, by the way, has acted in this matter with a coolness, a force 
and a pitiless energy that render the stories of his ' insanity ' the 
extreme of absurdity. His war upon Mr. Beecher may be 
regarded as a species of vivisection, and in the interest of 
humanity it should cease. The torture which Mr. Tilton has 
inflicted upon his enemy, so strongly shown in the letters of 



SOCIETY HAS CLAIMS. 295 

the unfortunate clergyman, should come to an end. Better 
that Henry Ward Beecher should be with the dead, and find 
that peace which his soul craved in his touching letters, than 
that he should live under the misery which Mr. Tilton has 
never ceased to force upon him since the 1st of January, 1871 
Whatever the end is, let us have the end, more particularly 
as Mr. Tilton in a remarkable interview, reprinted elsewhere 
from the Brooklyn Argus, intimates that he * could draw a 
sword with two edges.' In other words as he further shows, 
he will, if provoked, rake up the scandals that have been float- 
ing about Brooklyn, and introduce the names of ladies not yet 
named in the case, ladies who now hold good positions in 
society, as the alleged victims of sin and shame. 

"Upon this there is one plain word to be said. Mr. Tilton 
has told us that this was to be a day of battle and of death. 
He may make war upon his own family, upon Mr. Beecher 
and his family, and, whatever we may say, there is probably 
no method of interference. But if this controversy is to be 
made the means of carrying misery into other families; if Mr. 
Tilton is to brandish his ' two-edged sword ' over the house- 
holds of those who have not wronged him, who are not in this 
controversy, he enters upon a course so extraordinary that he 
becomes an outlaw and the common enemy of society — a 
course that can no more be permitted than we would permit a 
band of Sionx with their scalping knives to range around 
Brooklyn. Much is due to vindication and the assurance of 
one's good name, and much may be pardoned to a man in 
anger, in the heat of strife and at bay before his enemy. But 
society also has claims, and the time has come when it must 
be protected against the extraordinary course which Mr. Tilton 
assures us he stands ready to pursue." 

The week of anxiety, alarm and grief at the danger that en- 
vironed America's favorite minister ended on July 25th, and it 
was believed that the worst had been elicited — that after the 
week of storm a quiet rest would settle over the central figures 
in the unfortunate disputes, and that the Sabbath quietude 
would place all in a more forgiving frame of mind. Not so, 
however. The Brooklyn Sunday papers appeared and they 
were very hostile to Mr. Beecher — the Sunday Sun reviewing 
the case and charging that Mr. Beecher was convicted of all 
charged by his own letters, and those of Mrs. Tilton. But the 



296 THE WORST HAD BEEN TOLD. 

worst blow was reserved for infliction by the Sunday Review, 
and this stab came in the form of an interview with Mr. James 
McDermott, a journalist, who had been on confidential rela- 
tions with the Free Love sisters and learned many of their 
secrets. We would fain pass it over in silence, but feel that 
our duty to give all the material evidence on both sides de- 
mands its repetition here: — 

Eeporter— Mr. James McDermott, I presume ? 

Mr. McDermott — You needn't presume anything about it. 
Be sure you are right, and I think you are this time. 

Reporter — I am sent to see you, sir, by the Editor of the 
Sunday Review, respecting what you know of the Tilton 
scandal. 

Mr. McD. — Tilton be d scandal; call it by its proper 

name — the Beecher scandal. If the Review editor sent you to 
talk to me about this subject, lie had little respect for this 
weather or my capacity to endure it. 

Reporter — Commence where you like. 

Mr. McD. — Well, you want a sensation and I'll give you one 
or two. You are right in suggesting that I was one of the 
parties who accompanied Mr. Bowen and Mr. H. B. Claflin to 
the residence of Mrs. Woodhull on the afternoon of Mr. Tap- 
pen's funeral. He was, I believe, Mr. Bowen's father-in-law. 
But what of it ? 

Reporter — Oh, I merely wanted to know if you went there 
in the capacity of a journalist, or as a friend of Mr. Bowen's ? 

Mr. McD. — I confess I went there in a double capacity. I 
was there anyhow, all the time. Mr. Henry C. Bowen, Mr. H. 
B. Claflin, Mr. Bowen's nephew and son, Judge Ryer, Counselor 
Wood, and other gentlemen of this city were there with me. 
We went there for the purpose of hearing what Mrs. Woodhull 
and her counsel had to say, and to see what we might or could. 

Reporter — What, if anything, outside of your personal re- 
lationship with Mr. Bowen, prompted you to accompany these 
gentlemen on that occasion ? 

Mr. McD. — I'll be frank with you, sir. I cultivated Mrs. 
Woodhull's acquaintance through a business accident. Through 
her I became acquainted with her family. Victoria is a woman 
of advanced character. I never knew her to do an injury to 
any one, and in this reprehensible Beecher scandal I think she 
is the one, above all others, who has told the most truth. She 
certainly never lied to me, and I'll prove it to you, sir. 



JAMES McDERMOTT. 297 

Reporter — Can you do it by documentary evidence? 

Mr. Mel). — 1 can. Why here, my dear sir, is the original of 
the letter which made me know both Beecher and Tilton first. 
You see it's in Tilton's own handwriting, and does away effec- 
tually with Beecher's theory that he only knew Mrs. Woodhull 
through h< r asking him to preside at one of her meetings. 
Beecher falsifies, and here's the proof of it — a proof that has 
been in my possession for nearly two years — and this document 
I showed to Deacon West, of Plymouth Church, when he called 
upon me in relation to this matter. 

Mr. McDermott then showed the reporter a letter, of which 
the following is a copy: — 

" Golden Age. 
My Dear Victoria : — I have arranged with Frank that you shall see 
Mr. Beecher at my house on Friday night. He will attend a meeting at 
the church till ten o'clock, and will give you the rest of the evening as late 
as you desire. You may consider tin's fixed. Meanwhile, on this sunshiny 
day, I salute you with a good morning — peace be with you. 

Yours, 

Theodoke Tilton. 

Keporter — That letter is evidently genuine but what does it 
prove ? 

Mr. McD. — It proves Mr. Beecher a falsifier, though the 
letter is not dated, it is in my possession over two years — prior 
to the time I published the tripartite statement so often alluded 
to. Why, my friend, I have in my possession over one hundred 
letters of Mr. Tilton's, and three or four of Mr. Beecher's in 
connection with this matter. I have a good many of them yet ; 
but sit down till I shock you: 

In company with Mr.Bowen'sson — his youngest by his first 
wife, I believe — and anephew. I visited what we then considered 
the bed-side of a dying woman. We were accompanied by Mr. 
Tusch, now a reporter on the Eagle, who made stenographic 
notes of all that was said on the occasion of what I style the 
death-bed confession. 

The record is now or was in Mr. Bowen's house. That 
record pronounces the dishonor of the dead Mrs. * * * * " * by 
Mr. Beecher, and in a manner that I would blush to repeat. It 
implicated also the wife of a physician, and other ladies on the 
Heights whose names I do not feel at liberty just now to men- 
tion, but I will if I am forced to it. I admire Mrs. Beecher's 
course in this matter, she is a noble woman and a true wife, and 
13* 



298 HUNDRED LETTERS. 

Mrs. Tilton would do well to follow her example rather than 
her advice. I claim to know why Mrs. Beecher was sent to 
Italy by her husband, and now conscientiously believe that the 
only way for Mr. Beecher to get out of this matter is to make 
a frank and open confession. The public are generous and 
willing to forgive him as a man; but he must retire from the 
ministry. 

Reporter — Did Mrs. Woodhull show you the letters of Mr. 
Beecher ? 

Mr. McD. — She did, and in the presence of Mr. Horace B. 
Claflin and Henry 0. Bowen ; I know the letters to be genuine, 
and, as Mrs. Woodhull afterwards said to me on the steamer 
going to Long Branch, she would not give them up nor dis- 
close their contents because she felt that she was being prose- 
cuted in the Courts by Plymouth Church, or rather by indi- 
viduals acting for it by proxy. 

Reporter. — Could you be mistaken respecting the identity of 
the letters of Mr. Beecher or Mr. Tilton ? 

Mr. McD. — I might, but I was convinced of their genuine- 
ness by Mr. Claflin, a most upright and responsible gentleman 
and citizen. 




RESIDENCE OF THEODORE TILTON. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THEODORE ON" THE RACK OF CROSS-EXAMINATION" — HE AD- 
HERES TO HIS STORIES OF "CRIMINAL COMMERCE" AND DE- 
SCRIBES "THE ANKLE SCENE," THE "BEDROOM MEETING," 
ETC. — A PECULIARLY BAD MEMORY — HE GIVES MR. BEECHER 
THE BENEFIT OF A DOUBT — "MUTUAL FRIEND MOULTON" 
AND A HISTORY OF ELIZABETH'S CONFESSION — DRAMATIC 
DENIALS, FIERCE THREATS AND DEFIANCES. 

On Sunday evening, July 27th, the grand committee of In- 
quisition, through their chairman, supplied the press of New 
York with the stenographer's report of the testimony on cross- 
examination. It is here given in full, including Mr. Sage's 
letter transmitting it: — 

General Tracy^-Are you able to give the date of the trans- 
action which you say you witnessed at Mr. Beecher's house at 
the time of the examination of the engraving ? A. I cannot 
state the date. 

Q. At the time you received the information you speak of 
from your wife, you were the editor of the Independent and of 
the Brooklyn U?iion, I believe? A. I was. 

Q. Did your wife continue to attend Plymouth Church after 
that information ? A. Yes, sir ; that was in the summer time; 
she went into the country and was absent a long time; she has 
always continued to attend, once or twice a year; she is a mem- 
ber of Plymouth Church. 

Q. Did she attend regularly after returning from the country ? 
A. No, sir; she attended occasionally for Communion service, 
and would steal in quietly at the corner of the building so as 
to be unobserved. 

Q. Previous to announcing your discovery or pretended dis- 
covery to Mr. Beecher, you had fallen into trouble with Henry 
C. Bowen, had you not? A. Yes, sir. 

299 



300 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 

Q. How long before ? A. Two days. 

Q. You had ceased to be the editor of the Independent when 
you made this announcement? A. No, sir. I ceased to be 
the editor of the Independent on the 1st day of January. 

Q. Was not your valedictory published on the 22d of De- 
cember? A. Yes, sir, but my engagement ended on the 31st. 

Q. Had you not entered into a contract with Mr. Bowen to 
"be the editor of the Union and contributor to the Independent 
before you made any announcement to Mr. Beecher of this pre- 
tended discovery, and had not Mr. Bowen discovered immor- 
alities on your part, and did he not threaten to break the en- 
gagement ? A. No, he did not. 

Q. Did he not make such allegations against you, and did 
not you and he appoint a day of meeting at his house, when, 
in the presence of a mutual friend, the allegations against you 
should be stated, and you should make an explanation, and did 
not you meet in the presence of a mutual friend for that pur- 
pose? A. No, sir; Mr. Johnson wished me, about Christmas 
time, to see Mr. Bowen ; he said there was some story afloat 
concerning me; I think Christmas was Sunday and I went to 
see him on Monday; we had a few words concerning the mat- 
ter; he did not tell me what the story was; 1 said, "If there is 
any story afloat bring the author of it here and let us see what 
it is;" we then went on in a conversation concerning Mr. 
Beecher/' 

Q. Did not you and Mr. Bowen meet on that day, and did 
not Mr. Bowen begin to repeat the charges against you, and 
did not you, while listening to those charges, break out against 
the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher? A. I did not; I never heard 
of those charges until after, that interview, when Mr. Bowen 
w r ent from it to bear the letter to Mr. Beecher; I never knew 
that Mr. Beecher or Mrs. Beecher had anything to do with Mr. 
Bo wen's feelings. 

Q. Did not you make an allegation against Mr. Beecher? 
A. No, sir; after Mr. Johnson went out he made an allegation. 

Q. Did not you make an allegation? A. I did toward the 
end of the interview. 

Q. You made a very distinct allegation to Mr. Bowen, did 
you not, against Mr. Beecher, of the offense that he had com- 
mitted against you? A. Yes. 

Q. It was on that occasion, was it not, that the letter was 
agreed upon between you and Mr. Bowen demanding that Mr. 
Beecher should quit Plymouth pulpit? A. I remember a 
letter. 



THEY MADE STATEMENTS. 301 

Q. "Was it on that occasion that the letter was agreed upon 
between you and Mr. Bo wen ? A. Yes, it was. 

Q. And was that agreement the result of his statement of the 
offenses against Mr. Seedier which he and you knew of? A. 
On the part of Mr. Bo wen, yes. 

Q. On your part ? A. I made one statement and he made 
many. 

Q. Will you state what offense you stated against Mr. Beecher 
to Mr. Bowen on that occasion? A. Mr. Johnson having in- 
troduced the subject, Mr. Bowen said to me, " Mr. Til ton, you 
do not say as much of Plymouth Church as a Brooklyn paper 
should; you do not go there; why do you not go?" 

Q. I asked you what offense you stated against Mr. Beecher 
to Mr. Bowen ? A. I must answer your question in my own 
way. 1 came to tell you the truth and not fragments of the 
truth. Mr. Bowen wanted me to speak more in the paper of 
Plymouth Church. Mr. Johnson said, "Perhaps Mr. Tilton 
has a reason for not going to Plymouth Church." And there- 
upon Mr. Bowen was curious to know the reason. I, in a soli- 
tary phrase, said that there was a personal, domestic reason why 
I could not go there consistently with my self-respect — that 
Mr. Beecher had been unhandsome in his approaches to my 
wife. That is the sum and substance of all I have ever said 
on this subject to the very few people to whom I have spoken 
of it. 

Q. It was on that occasion that you agreed upon the letter 
which demanded Mr. Beecher to leave the pulpit? A. Yes, sir, 
that was the precise occasion. 

Q. You think that was on the 26th of December ? A. I 
have no recollection of dates ; the only identification that I 
have in my mind is that it was near Christmas. 

Q. When were you dismissed from the Union ? A. The last 
night of the year, I think. 

Q. The 31st, was it? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. When did you first learn that Mr. or Mrs. Beecher had 
in any way communicated facts to Mr. Bowen which inflamed 
him in the matter of your dismissal? A. I learned that from 
Mr. Beecher himself on the day after his apology was written; 
it was the 2d, possibly the 3d, of January; it was in Mr. Moul- 
ton's front room; Mr. Beecher came in, it was an unexpected 
meeting; he burst out in an expression of great sorrow to me, 
and said he hoped the communication which he had sent to 
me by Mr. Moulton was satisfactory to me; he then and there 



302 DESCRIBES AN INTER VIE W. 

told Mr. Moulton he had done wrong, not so much as some 
others had (referring to his wife, who had made statements to 
Mr. Bowen that ought to be unmade), and he there volun- 
teered to write a letter to Mr. Bowen concerning the facts 
which he had misstated. 

Q. Do you say that was the first time that you knew 
that Mr. Beecher or Mrs. Beecher had given Mr. Buwen any 
information or had any conversation with him on the sub- 
ject? A. Yes, sir ; I did not know that Mr. Beecher had given 
Mr. Bowen any such information; Mrs. Tilton had intimated 
to me that there was something. 

Q. When did Mrs. Tilton intimate that to you? A. In De- 
cember she told me of visits which Mrs. Beecher had made to 
her and of testimony which they wanted to get. 

Q. What time in December ? A. I do not know. 

Q. Was it before or after the publication of your valedictory 
in the Independent? A. I do not remember ; Mrs. Tilton spoke 
to me a number of times of the enmity which Mrs. Beecher 
had for some strange reason connected with Mrs. Morse (Mrs. 
Tilton's mother); there was a conspiracy between Mrs. Morse 
and Mrs. Beecher before September; the truth is that Mrs. 
Tilton's confession was made also to her mother, and the moth- 
er naturally wanted to protect the daughter, and she made a 
kind of alliance with Mr. Beecher, and Mrs. Beecher took part 
in it ; there was a desire on their part to protect Elizabeth. 

Q. You say that Mrs. Tilton referred some time in Decem- 
ber to the fact that Mrs. Beecher had interfered in your mat- 
ters ? A. Not that she had interfered in my matters, but that 
Mrs. Morse and Mrs. Beecher were colieaguing together with 
reference to me. 

Q. Are you able to fix that date? A. It was many times. 

Q. Was any of it before the 22d of December, think you ? 
A. Yes, I think early in the summer, but do not know. 

Q. Any time in December was Mrs. Tilton separated from 
you with her family? A. Not that I remember; Mrs. Tilton 
went a few weeks to make a visit at her mother's. 

Q. Do you remember the occasion of sending for your wife 
to come to the Union office while she was separated from you ? 
A. Yes, she was at her mother's. 

Q. Do you remember telling her that you were about to be 
dismissed from the Union, and that she must return to you 
and live with you to prevent it? Did you tell her anything of 
that ? A. Not a shadow ; It would have made no difference 
one way or the other. 



HE SENT A NOTE. 303 

Q. Did you on that day send a letter by a servant by the 
name of Ellen, directing the person in whose house she was to 
return your children to your house in her absence ? A. I do 
not, recollect it; Mrs. Morse had the children, and I told El- 
len Dennis to bring them ; I do not remember the time. 

Q. Did you send a note by her ? A. I sent quite a peremp- 
tory message. 

Q. And the children came? A. Yes, or were brought; I 
think there was only one. 

Q. Did your wife come late in the evening after that? A. I 
do not remember ; I think I went personally for Elizabeth, 
and told her she was doing wrong in staying away ; I have no 
distinct recollection of so many details. 

Q. How long after that return was it that this statement, 
which you say she made, and which was placed in Mr. Moul- 
ton's hands, was written ? A. I do not know; I have no means 
of knowing ; the date of her giving the letter for the inter- 
view with Mr. Beecher I think was on the 29th of December. 

Q. The object of giving the letters was to bring about an 
interview between you and Mr. Beecher that there might be a 
reconciliation, and that Mr. Beecher might aid in saving you 
from dismissal from the IndcjJsndeiit? A. No. Mrs. Tilton 
thought that my retirement from the papers was due in some 
way to Mr. and Mrs. Beecher, and she thought as I was very- 
indignant against Mr. Bowen, unless there was some reconcili- 
ation between Mr. Beecher and myself, her secret would be ex- 
posed, and she begged me to have an interview with him, and 
wrote a note to that effect. 

Q. Have you that note ? A. I decline to answer. 

Q. Will you produce it? A. I decline to answer. I decline 
to answer because you know the fact already. 

Q. You say that note was written on the 29th day of De- 
cember? A. I think there is a record on the subject here (in 
the statement which he had read) somewhere. 

By Mr. Hill — Can you refer to a note written by you to El- 
len? Do you think that had a date attached which would fix 
the time? A. I do not know; I remember Ellen to have had 
something to do with the return of one of the children ; I think 
that note was written to Mrs. Morse. 

Q. Was not the subject of the interview between you and 
Mr. Beecher for the purpose of inducing him to aid in pre- 
venting your dismissal ? A. No more than it had with this in- 
vestigation; the sole purpose of that interview was this. Mrs. 



304: TILTON' S DISMISSAL. 

Tilton felt; that Mr. Beeclier and I were in danger of coming 
into collision : for her sake, at her request, I had this inter- 
view; it w is solely in reference to Mrs. Tilton. 

Q. It was two days before your final dismissal, and pending 
the question whether you should be retained, or not ? A. My 
dismissal from the Union came after that interview; it took 
effect the last night of the year ; my interview with Mr. Beecli- 
er had nothing to do with that. 

By General Tracy — It was two days before it, and pending 
the question of whether you would be dismissed or retained, 
was it not ? A. No, sir; these documents themselves, I think, 
show that my interview with Mr. Beech er was after my dismis- 
sal from the Union. 

Q. That interview was on the 29th, and your dismissal was 
on the 31st. Then that interview was before your dismissal, 
and pending the question whether you would be retained or 
dismissed, was it not? A. The question of my dismissal, was 
decided in the flash of an eye ; I never knew that there was 
any such question ; I, two or three days previous to the inter- 
view with Mr. Beecher, had filled up contracts, one to be edi- 
tor of the Union for five years and the other to be chief con- 
tributor of the Independent, and there was no pending ques- 
tion. 

Q. Was not your contract to be editor of the Union for five 
years, and to be chief contributor of the Independent, signed 
previous to the publication of your valedictory in the Inde- 
pendent? A. They were signed very near that time. 

Q. Was not the interview at which Mr. Johnson was pres- 
ent at Mr. Bowen's house on the 26th of December? A. Yes, 
sir. 

Q. The interview with Mr. Beecher was on the 29th ? A. I 
cannot say precisely. 

Q. Your final dismissal from the Union was ' on the 31st? 
A. I cannot say yes, unless the letters will show. 

Q. Will you tell us why it was that having been possessed of 
this information for six months without any desire to com- 
municate it to Mr. Beecher, you were seized with a desire to 
communicate that information to him on or about the 29th of 
December ? A. Yes. sir ; because Mrs. Tilton feared that Mr. 
Beecher, Mr. Bowen and I were in danger of such a clash and 
collision that the family secret would be exposed, and felt that 
there was a necessity for a reconciliation, and she begged and 
prayed me to be reconciled with Mr. Beecher ; and on her ac- 



IN DANGER OF A CLASH. 305 

count and for her sake I said I would have an interview with 
him. 

Q. Will you explain why the difficulty you had with Mr. 
Bowen in regard to the Independent and the Union would in- 
volve the necessity of your exposing the family secret which 
you obtained from Mrs. Tilton six months before? A. It was 
not through fear of my exposing it; Mrs. Morse and Mrs. 
Beecher were sometimes in collision, and Mrs. Tilton always 
made me believe that Mr. Beecher knew this secret, until in 
December, when she told me. I took it for granted, all summer 
long, that she had told him what she had told me, and what 
she had told her mother, and I suppose that Mrs. Beecher was 
co-operating with Mrs. Morse. 

Q. Did you complain of Mr. Beecher for not aiding you to 
remain in the Independents A. No, sir; I would have scorned 
it. 

Q. You have read Mr. Wilkeson's statement ? A. I have 
not. 

Q. You know Samuel Wilkeson ? A. Yes. 
Q, Did you say to him about that time that Mr. Beecher had 
not befriended you in that matter? A. I did not, and Mr. 
Wilkeson will not dare to say that under oath. 

Q. You say you never complained of Mr. Beecher for not 
helping you ? A. No, not for not helping me, but for being 
unjust to me and saying that I ought to be turned out; I un- 
derstood that he said to Dr. Spear that they were going to 
have Mr. Tilton out of the Independent ; Mr. Charles Briggs 
told me that; he said, " I know something about this; I 
heard some such thing." 

Q. You say that Mr. Beecher apologized and that you ac- 
cepted the apology ? A. I read the account of that in the doc- 
ument. 

Q. Did you, or did you not, as a matter of fact, accept the 
apology which Mr. Beecher made, and forgive the offence ? 
A. I accepted the apology and forgave the offence with as 
much largeness as I thought it was possible for a Christian man 
to assume. 

Q. Friendly relations continued after that between you and 
Mr. Beecher? A. Well, not friendly; you can understand 
what such relations would be; they were not hostile; they 
were relations which Mr. Moulton forced with an iron hand; 
he compelled them. 

Q. Did you or not, after or about the time of the tripartite 



306 HE WENT TO DR. STORRS. 

agreement, express friendly sentiments in regard to him ? A. 
I have taken pains to make it appear in all quarters that Mr. 
Beecher and 1 were not in hostility, and I have suppressed my 
self-respect many times in duing it. 

Q. Did you ever state this offence of Mr. Beecher as com- 
mitted against you to Mr. Storrs? A. I never did. 

Q. Was it ever stated in your presence to him ? A. No, sir; 
he read a statement that Mrs. Til ton made and that I helped 
her to make. 

Q. Did you go with her when she made that statement to 
Dr. Storrs? A. I did not. 

Q. Did you ever state or read to Dr. Storrs any statement 
of the offences which you charged against Mr. Beecher? A. 
No; I showed Dr. Storrs a letter which Elizabeth and myself 
wrote and which I still preserve ; Mr. Carpenter and I went to 
Dr. Storrs as counsellor; my intention was to have Elizabeth 
go, but she preferred to write a few lines. 

Q. You took what she wrote and what you helped her to 
write to Dr. Storrs and showed it to him as the statement of 
the offence which you charged Mr. Beecher with ? A. No. I 
did not charge Mr. Beecher with any offence at all. 

Q. I am trying to get at what offence you stated against Mr. 
Beecher. A. Elizabeth stated that. 

Q. And you had it and gave it to Dr. Storrs to read? A. 
Yes, sir. 

Q. How was the offence stated ? A. It began in this way, 
that on a certain day, in the summer of 1870, she had informed 
her husband that Mr. Beecher had asked her to be a wife to 
him together with all that this implies; she was very solicitous 
to make it that she did not accept his proposition, and, happi- 
ly, in reading it, those who saw it, naturally inferred that she 
did not accept his proposition; it was a perfectly correct state- 
ment. 

Q. You and she wrote it? A. She wrote it with my as- 
sistance. 

Q. You took that statement to Dr. Storrs, and it was read 
by him in your presence ? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. It was read also to Mr. Beecher? A. I read it to him 
myself. Mr. Beecher objected to it and I made no further use 
of it. 

Q. You prepared a document, did you not, giving a history 
of this case ? A. No, not in this case, but of my relations to 
Mr. Bowen. 



HE WANTED COUNSEL. 307 

Q. It was stated in that document ? A. Yes ; this letter 
of Elizabeth's was quoted in it. 

Q. And it was read to Dr. Storrs ? A. Yes. 

Q. Did you also quote the letter of apology in it? A. 
Jnst as I did in the letter to Dr. Bacon ? 

Q. You quoted the apology as an apology for the offence ? 
You stated and cited it as proof that he had apologized for that 
offence ? A. Yes, I put that in, not wishing to make the 
offence more than that; I was solicitous not to have the worst 
of the case known. 

Q. You went voluntarily to Dr. Storrs, did you not ? A. 
I did, in great distress, wanting counsel. 

Q. And so as to get correct counsel you misstated the case ? 
A. Yes, as you did in your statement in the Union ; it was a 
statement necessary to be made; after Mrs. Woodhull's state- 
ment I was out of town, and the thing had filled the country, 
and Mr. Beecher had taken no notice of it ; it was seven or 
eight days old, and I went to Dr. Storrs for counsel ; he asked 
me about the story ; I said, " Do not ask me for that ; " he said, 
"Give me some facts by which I can judge; give me that 
which can be proved ;" so I gave an account of my affairs very 
largely, about Mrs. Woodhull, and so on ; the origin of that 
document was a seeking for something that would put before 
the public a plausible answer to the Woodhull tale, and I con- 
ceived that by a chain of facts we might, perhaps, explain it 
away. I read it to Mr. Beecher and he burst into a long sigh, 
and I saw that he would not or could not stand upon it ; and 
Elizabeth burned it or tore it to pieces. 

Q. You showed it to others did you not ? A. To a few 
friends. 

Q. To whom besides Dr. Storrs? A. I think that I 
showed it to George Bell ; I showed it to one or two. 

Q. Did you show it to Mr. Beecher ? A. No ; I think 
not; I think I showed him the document in the tripartite con- 
fession. 

Q. You have known Mr. Beecher many years. A. Yes, 
sir. 

Q. Is he your personal friend? A. I used to regard him 
as such. 

Q. You remember showing him something on this subject? 
A. I remember showing him the letter in proof, which ex- 
plained my going out of the Independent and the Union; 
whether I showed him the document, I cannot say ; I showed 



308 JUS OPINION OF ELIZABETH. 

it to a number of people, hoping that it would do good ; but 
it did not, so it disappeared. 

Q. You say Mr. Beecher refused to stand upon it? A. 
No ; Mr. Moulton asked Mr. Beecher to come and hear me 
read it ; 1 was in hopes Mr. Beecher might not feel bad at such 
a document, but: he felt slain by it. 

Q. And, just as on other occasions, he refused to stand by 
a statement of the offence? A. No ; he drew a long sigh. 

Q. You understood him as refusing? A. No ; I did not 
understand that. 

Q. Why did you abandon the document ? A. Because 
there was no success in it. 

Q. Why was there no success in it ? Was it not because he 
did not accept it ? A. Because he did not accept or reject it; 
he wanted that no statement should be made, and so the thing 
was buried. 

Q. Did you ever state the offence to Dr. Budington ? A. 
I never saw him until within two weeks; I heard that he went 
to see Dr. Bacon, and I went to see him. 

Q. Have you not frequently asserted the purity of your 
wife? A. No ; I have always had a strange technical use of 
words; 1 have always used words that conveyed that impres- 
sion ; I have taken pains to say that she was a devoted Chris- 
tian woman; that necessarily carried the other; it was like the 
statement that I carried to Dr. JStorrs; I do not think he 
caught the idea of that statement; as he took it 1 do not think 
that it covered the whole; I have said that Elizabeth was a 
tender, delicate, kindly, Christian woman, which i think she 
is. 

Q. Have not you stated that she was pure? A. No. 

Q. Have you not stated that she was as pure as an angel ? 
A. No; Mr. Halliday says I said that; he asked me in Mrs. 
Bradshaw's presence whether or not 1 had not said that my 
wife was as pure as gold, " No," 1 said, " Mr. Halliday, because 
the conversation to which you allude was this: — 1 said 'Go 
and ask Mr. Beecher himself and he will say that she is as 
pure as gold ; ' " it is an expression which he used ; I have 
sought to give Elizabeth a good character; I have always 
wanted to do so; I think she deserves a good character; I 
think she is better than most of us — better than I am; I do 
not believe in point of actual moral goodness, barring some 
drawbacks, that there is in this company so white a soul as 
Elizabeth Til ton. 



TOO ROSE-COLORED. 300 

Q. Did you not state that, in substance, to one or more of 
the gentlemen with whom you were lunching? A. In sub- 
stance, yes; and I state it now, but I did not use the phrase 
that she had never violated her chastity. 

Q. Did you not say that she was pure ? A. No. 

Q. Did you not use expressions which you intended to be 
understood as meaning the purity of the woman? A. I did, 
exactly. There are many ways in which you can produce such 
impressions, and I have written this document to produce the 
same impression. 

By Mr. White — Mr. "Wilkeson, in his testimony, stated in 
substance that he had a long conversation with you in regard 
to Mr. Beecher's offences, and that in answer to his inquiry as 
to what these offences consisted of, you said that he had made 
improper addresses to your wife, and that he then said to you 
that he had heard from another person whom he named to you 
that it referred to more than the implication, that it referred to 
adultery, which you denied. Is that true? A. No; the con- 
versation was about Mr. Bowen: he came to me with a flushed 
and rose-colored eulogy on Mr. Beecher for me to sign; it was 
desired that Mr. Bowen's charges should be withdrawn, and it 
was said to me, " suppose Mr. Bowen is willing to blot this out, 
you have no interest to keep it afloat ? " "No," I said. " Well, 
if Mr. Bowen will withdraw those charges, will you agree to 
consider them blotted out?" I said, " Certainly." I was ex- 
ceedingly glad to have it done, for I thought that every charge 
against Henry Ward Beecher endangered my wife; I said that I 
would sign it twenty times over, or conveyed such an idea; 
but when the paper was brought to me to sign it was a compli- 
ment to Mr. Beecher, rose-colored, in which I was to look up to 
him with filial respect. I said, "I won't sign that to the end 
of the world," and I cut out a few lines and would not use 
them. 

Q. It is not with reference to the circumstances of signing 
the paper that I am speaking, but with reference to the ques- 
tion which he put to you as to the offence. A. He did not 
put to me any such question; Mr. Wilkeson is too much of a 
gentleman to ask a man whether his wife had committed 
adultery. 

Q. Mr. Wilkeson says you took the paper away to make 
such emendations as you chose before signing it, and that after, 
perhaps, the second night, on its return, you said to him that 
you never would sign anything that required you to let up on 



310 HIS FEELINGS TO WARDS BEECUER. 

Henry Ward Beecher ? A. I said that my self-respect would 
not permit me to do it ; I told him also, or I told other per- 
sons, that I would keep to the line of that necessary reconcilia- 
tion which Mr. Moulton had planned, but that as for going to 
Mr. Beecher's church, or signing such a letter, I would wait to 
the end of the world first, and I did not think Mr, Bo wen 
would sign it. 

By Mr. Cleveland — You expressed confidence in the paper 
you signed in Mr. Beecher, did you not ? A. No ; I expressed 
friendliness toward him. 

By Mr. White — Mr. Wilkeson says, in substance, that in 
speaking of your dismissal from the Union you spoke of Mr. 
Beecher as not assisting you, and said that you would follow 
him to his grave ? A. If Mr. Wilkeson communicates the 
impression that I ever wanted money from Henry Ward Beecher, 
it is false; Mr. Beecher has communicated, through Mr. Moulton 
requests that I be assisted by him, but I would not take a 
penny of Mr. Beecher's money if I suffered from hunger or 
thirst; and I said that if directly or indirectly he (Mr. Moul- 
ton) communicated to me any of his (Mr. Beecher's) money it 
would break out friendship ; Wilkeson was very friendly to 
me ; he is a sweet, lovable man, and it is an unaccountable 
thing that his memory is so bad; he is getting old; I have a 
letter in which he wants that apology delivered up. 

Q. I will read to you from Mr. Wilkeson's testimony: — 
"His next complaint was that Mr. Beecher did not help him 
in his troubles." A. That's a lie ; my complaint was that Mr. 
Beecher had been unjust to me, not that he had not helped 
me ; I would not have taken his help. 

By General Tracy — T ask you whether your relations and 
feelings toward Mr. Beecher, since January 1st, 1871, have not 
been friendly? A. Yes, sir ; my relations and feelings to- 
ward him since January, 1871, when he made the apology, 
down to the time when the church began to put out its right 
* and and take me by the throat, were friendly. 

Q. They are not now friendly but they were friendly up to 
the beginning of the action of the church in this matter ? A. 
/Yes, sir; that is to say, they were friendly in the sense that we 
i were not in collision with each other. 

Q. Were they not those of friendship ? A. No they were 
/not. 

Q. What did you mean by saying, after that apology was 
^made, that you desired to see Mr. Beecher protected, rather 
[ than harmed, for his offence against you ? A. So I did. 



GRACE, MERCY AND PEACE. Z\\ 

Q. Do you mean to say that that sentence expressed your 
real feelings toward a man who, you believed, had seduced 
your wife? A. Yes; 1 was under obligation; I had taken 
his apology and I had given my word that I would not have 
him exposed. 

Q. Is it your sentiment that that is an offence for which 
one man can apologize to another? A. I know there is a 
code of honor among gentlemen that a man cannot condone 
such an offence; but I cannot see what offence a man cannot 
forgive, where an apology is made by the person committing it 
to the person against whom it is committed ; if a man believes 
in the Christian religion he ought to; 1 sometimes forgave and 
sometimes 1 did not ; 1 do know the line of difference. 

Q. Is that your handwriting (showing a slip of paper on 
which was written "II. W. B. — -Grace, mercy and peace. Sun- 
day morning. T. T." A. I remember that; one morning 
Mr. Bcecher met me in the street and told me how much 
pleasure it gave him; I have sent kindlier things than that to 
him. 

Q. Did you feel as you spoke ? A. I did ; Mr. Moulton 
said two or three times, "Mr. Beecher is in great depression; 
can't you do something to cheer him ? " One morning I walked 
to the church with him ; in many circumstances 1 manifested 
feelings of kindness toward him; it would be a lie for me to 
say that I had a warm friendship for Mr. Beecher, and that I 
felt as kindly to him as if the offence had not been committed; 
if I had been a man morally great, I would have blotted it out 
and trodden it under foot; I was competent to forgive in a 
large degree ; I forgave him in my best moods, but at other 
times 1 did not; I am not a very large man. 

Q. You have quoted extensively the letters of your wife 
written prior to the time you say that she said this intercourse 
began — have you not her letters written to you also since that 
time and during that time? A. No ; because at .that time I 
came home to be editor of the Union, and have not lectured 
since. 

Q. I ask you whether you have not letters from her writ- 
ten during the time that you say this was going on and since 
then ? A. No, not written since ; because I have not had 
occasion since to have letters ; I have been at home. 

Q. I understand you to say that these relations went on 
during your absence ; have you any letters that were written 
by your wife at that time ? A. ^"o. 



312 HIS LETTERS. 

Q. Have you not letters from her that were written to you 
between 1868 and 1870 ? A. I think I have. 

Q. Will you be kind enough to produce them, to the com- 
mittee ? A. I do not know whether I will or not. 

Q. Have you any letters from Mrs. Tilton complaining to 
you? A. Yes, I have. 

. Q. Have you not many letters from her stating forth her 
grievances? A. No she very rarely wrote such letters; she 
used occasionally to write to me letters begging intercession 
in regard to her mother and complaining of my views in 
theology. 

Q. Did you never receive letters from her complaining in 
other respects? A. In what respects? 

Q. Well in regard to people who were in the habit of 
frequenting your house at your solicitation? A. I have had 
letters from her mother, complaining of Susan Anthony and 
Mrs. Stanton; Mrs. Tilton thought Mr. Johnson and others 
were leading me astray; she is very orthodox; and she wrote 
me letters expressing strong and earnest hopes that I would be 
intensely orthodox. 

Q. Did she ever complain of any female society on that 
ground, or in any way ? A. No. 

Q. Did she never complain of the presence of any ladies at 
your house? A. I do not think of any. 

Q. Not of Mrs. Stanton nor Susan Anthony? A. She said 
she would consider it an insult if they came to the house; I 
do not remember of any others. 

Q. Mrs. Woodhull came a great deal didn't she? A. She 
was three times in my house, once to meet Mr. Beecher and 
on two other occasions. 

Q. Only three times? A. Three only. 

Q. You say she came to meet Mr. Beecher ? A. She did on 
Sunday afternoon at my house. 

Q. Do you know when that was? A. I think Mr. Moulton 
made that interview ; it must have been in 1871 or 1872, 
because my acquaintance with Mrs. Woodhull began in May, 
1871 ; my impression is that it was warm weather ; Mrs. Woodhull 
and her husband came; she always came with her husband. 

Q. Did your wife complain of her being at your house ? A. 
Yes ; my wife came home, and Mrs. Woodhull and Mr. Moulton 
were sitting in the front parlor. 

Q. What happened ? A. Oh, nothing, except that Elizabeth 
expressed her indignation against the woman ; I told Elizabeth 



MRS. WOODHULL' S VISITS., 313 

that she was too dangerous a woman, and that too much of 
the welfare of our family depended on her; Elizabeth was 
wiser than I was. 

Q. Did you excuse your acquaintance with Mrs. Woodhull 
to your wife by exciting her fears ? A. I did not ; I explained 
that acquaintance; I told her the way to get along with 
Mrs. Woodhull and prevent this coming out, was to keep friendly 
with her; it was a fatal policy, but then it seemed the only 
thing that we could do. 

Q. Was the time that Mrs. Til ton expressed her indignation 
at Mrs. Woodhuli's being at your house the first time that she 
had seen Mrs. Woodhull, to your knowledge? A. My impres- 
sion is that she saw her in the Golden Age office once. It may 
have been before or after. I think Mrs. Woodhull came in to 
see me while Mrs. Tilton was there. 

Q. With that exception, was the time ■when Mrs. Tilton 
expressed her indignation at Mrs. Woodhuli's being at your 
house the first time that she had seen her ? A. I do not know. 
Oh, no ; Mrs. Woodhull and Colonel Blood had taken tea at 
our house. 

Q. Before Mrs. Tilton came in and found her there ? A. 
Yes. 

Q. At whose invitation did they take tea there? A. At 
mine. 

Q. Was it the first time Mrs. Tilton saw Mrs. W^oodhull? 
A. I do not know. 

Q. Mrs. Tilton always expressed indignation at her being 
there, did she not? A. Yes, she had a violent feeling against 
her; she had a woman's instinct that Mrs. Woodhull was not 
safe ; the mistake was in not being friendly with Biood instead 
of Mrs. Woodhull ; that was the blunder; I was at fault for that 
nobody else. 

Q. l)id Mrs. Tilton continue her expressions of indignation 
at your acquaintance with Mrs. Woodhull? A. Yes; Mrs. 
Tilton always felt that the policy was a mistaken one of under- 
taking to do anything with Mrs. Woodhull; Mrs. Tilton 
objected violently to my writing the sketch of Mrs. Woodhull ; 
I read part of it to her; Mrs. Woodhuli's husband w r rote a 
biography about her, and wanted me to rewrite it, because my 
style was more vivid ; Mrs. Tilton said she thought I w T ould rue 
the day ; she was far wiser than I was. 

Q. Then you never succeeded in convincing your wife that 
it was necessary to placate Mrs. Woodhull ? A. No, she had 
14 



314 MRS. TILTON'S REPUGNANCE. 

the opposite opinion ; Mrs. Tilton had a strong repugnance 
to Mrs. Woodlmll and to two or three other public women — 
Mrs. Stanton and Susan Anthony; she would not permit them 
to come into the house, and some of her letters were very violent 
against them; she was frequently "with them for a long time 
and took part with them in women's meetings, and then she 
"took a violent antagonism to them after her troubles came on. 

Q. Did Mrs. Woodhull know of the antipathy of Mrs. Tilton 
to her? A. Yes; you could see it in the women's eyes; they 
flashed fire ; the moment they saw each other their eyes flashed 
fire. 

Q. It was perfectly evident, then, when the women came 
together, that they were thoroughly antagonistic? A. Oh, 
yes; thoroughly. 

Q. Bitterly so ? A. I cannot say that Elizabeth had bitter- 
ness; she had a certain moral and religious repugnance. 

Q. Did not she discard Mrs. Woodhull's sentiments and 
denounce them? A. Mrs. Woodhull had not then expressed 
her sentiments. 

Q. Not in 1872 ? A. This was not in 1872; when I wrote 
the sketch of Mrs. Woodhull she had never said anything on 
the subject of free love ; her ideas were spiritualism and woman's 
suffrage. 

By General Tracy — Q. Mr. Tilton, on page 51 of your man- 
uscript, in subdivision X, you say, "In December 1870, 
differences arose between Theodore Tilton and Henry 0. 
Bowen, which were augmented by the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher and Mrs. Beecher. -in consequence whereof, and at the 
wish of Mrs. Elizabeth R Tilton expressed in writing in a 
paper put into the hands of," etc., you do not state then in 
whose handwriting it was. A. It was Mrs. Tilton's. 

Q. Was it not in your handwriting? A. It was not, sir. 

Q. Did you not write that statement and get her to sign it? 
A. No, sir. 

Q. Did you dictate it in any manner? A. I did not. 

Q. Did you write the original ? A. I did not. 

Q. Was she well or sick at the time? A. She was neither 
one nor the other; she was ailing. 

Q. Had she not suffered a miscarriage just previous ? A. 
Well, I do not know how long before; I cannot tell the date; 
whether it came before or after I do not know; she was ill, I 
know. 

Q. Was she not in bed ? A. Most of the time. 



BO WEN AND BEECHER' S DIFFERENCES. 315 

Q. Was she not in bed at the time of the writing of this 
paper? A. I do not remember. 

Q. Do you remember whether she wrote it in bed or not ? 
A. I do not. 

Q. Do you not know that she had suffered a miscarriage a 
few days before ? A. No ; I knew she had suffered a miscar- 
riage before. 

Q. Before the 24th day of December ? A. I do not remem- 
ber the date. 

Q. Do you not know that she was very sick, and sick unto 
death ? A. No, I do not know that she was sick unto death; 
she was ill, but not dangerously so. 

Q. Who suggested to her the writing of that letter ? A. 
She did it herself. 

Q. Was she conversant with the particular state of your 
difficulty with Mr. Bowen from time to time and from day to 
day? A. It was not from day to day; I always informed her 
what troubles I had. 

Q. You say this letter was written in consequence of the 
interference of Mr. and Mrs. Beecher ? A. No, not precisely ; 
I say that the letter was written through her desire that he 
and I should be reconciled. 

Q. When you say that in " December, 1870, differences 
arose between Theodore Tilton and Henry C. Bowen, which 
were augmented by the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. 
Beecher; in consequence whereof, and at the wish of Mrs. 
Elizabeth R. Tilton, expressed in writing in a paper put into 
the hands of Mr. Francis D. Moulton," why do you say that it 
was in consequence of that difficulty being augmented by Mr. 
and Mrs. Beecher that this letter was written or this writing 
was made ? A. Mrs. Tilton 's confession to me was in the 
middle of the summer; she informed me shortly afterward 
that she had taken occasion to let Mr. Beecher know that she 
had made this confession, but she did not do that; I supposed 
that he knew of her confession, but he did not know of it. I 
met Mr. Beecher on the street, and he was about to speak to 
me ; I did not speak to him ; that excited my suspicion of the 
fact that he could not have known of Mrs. Tilton's confession ; 
so I said to her, " Elizabeth, did not you tell me that Mr. 
Beecher knew what you had told me; to my mind he don't 
know it;" she then informed me that she could not bear to 
let him know that she had confessed ; then, I think, her sick- 
ness came, though my recollection of dates, as I have said is 



very poor ; towards the close of the year, or very near the close 
of the year, Mr. Bo wen wanted to make a change in the editor- 
ship of the Independent ; Mrs. Tilton was at Mrs. Morse's; she 
had gone to stay there a little while ; Mr. Bowen sent me a 
notice or a letter, saying that he wanted the termination of 
my contract as editor of the Independent to take place six 
months subsequently; I said to myself instantly, "If Mr. 
Bowen wishes me to terminate the Independent, I must give 
him notice to terminate the Union; but before that I will 
send to Elizabeth to come to the Union office and state this 
proposition to her;" she came down and I informed her; I 
said, " Now, I cannot afford to edit only one of these papers ; 
if I am to give up one I cannot keep the other;" when Mr. 
Bowen proposed that I should give up one and retain the 
other, I instantly said, " As he proposes that I shall give up 
the Indepe?ide?it I will give up the Union, and that will leave 
me free to lecture." After that, about the 23d or 24th of 
December, Mr. Bowen came to have a consultation with me 
and make new contracts, by which he should be editor of the 
Independent and I a special contributor of the Independent and 
for five years the editor of the Union ; that contract was signed 
during the last week or ten days of 1870, and I published a 
valedictory in the Independent speaking well of Mr. Bowen, 
and he spoke well of me. 

Somewhere about the 23d or 24:th or 25th — between the pub- 
lishing of that valedictory and the making of those two or 
three contracts — Mr. Johnson came to my house and said, 
" Mr. Bowen has heard something prejudicial concerning you; 
I think you had better go and see him." It was {Saturday 
night. I went plump to his house and saw him, and said, 
"Mr. Bowen, Mr. Johnson says that you know something 
prejudicial to me." Mr. Bowen said, "I have my new editors 
in consultation and it is Saturday night ; come on Monday. " 
Monday was a holiday. Either Sunday was the actual Christ- 
mas or else Monday wa?, I do not remember which. I went 
on Monday with Mr. Johnson. I think this was on the 25th. 
We had a little talk. It was mentioned that some story had 
come to Mr. Bowen. I said, " Bring the person who told it 
into my presence and we will have the matter settled." I then 
went on talking about the new contract which I was to enter 
upon two or three days hence, as the editor of the Union for 
five years; he said that I ought to make more of Plymouth 
church and go to Plymouth church ; Mr. Johnson said, " Per- 



BO WEN THREA TENS. 317 

haps this young man has a reason for not going to Plymouth 
church ;" I gave him in a line to understand that I had lost 
my respect for Mr. Beecher; and could not, as a man maintain- 
ing my pride and self-respect, go there; at that, Mr. Bowen 
stated all the particulars that I chronicled of Mr. Beecher in 
that letter, only more vividly ; at that Mr. Bowen made a 
challenge that Mr. Beecher would retire from the ministry, 
and said he would bear it and fortify it with facts, and I signed 
it and he carried it; in a few hours Mr. Moulton came in and 
I told him what I had done, and he said, " You are a damned 
fool, Mr. Bowen should have signed the letter as well as your- 
self; " the next morning I went to the Union office, and per- 
haps the morning after I wrote a little note to Mr. Bowen, the 
substance of which was that I was going to have a personal 
interview with Mr. Beecher ; that I thought was the manly 
thing ; Mr. Bowen, the next morning, after he had instituted 
this demand for the retirement of Mr. Beecher, and after say- 
ing that he would fortify it with facts, came to the Union office 
and said, "Sir, if you ever reveal to Mr. Beecher the things 
that I told you and Mr. Johnson I will cashier you;" it went 
through my blood; I said, "I will, at my discretion, utterly 
uninfluenced by you," and he was in a rage ; then, after two or 
three days, and while I was writing my first article for the 
Independent under the new arrangement, as contributor in- 
stead of editor, there came (I guess it was the last night of the 
year) notices breaking my two contracts ; those two contracts 
had been made within a week, and were not to take effect until 
the first of the year, and they were broken the last night of the 
year, or the night before ; I went around to Frank with them, 
and showed them to him immediately; the next day I wrote 
my letter to Mr. Bowen ; events came crowding together pell- 
im 11 so thick and fast that I do not know how to disentangle 
them. 

Q. Why do you say that it was in consequence of the diffi- 
culty being augmented by Mr. and Mrs. Beecher? A. Eliza- 
beth saw that Mr. Bowen and I were in collision ; she was 
afraid that the collision would extend to Mr. Beecher and me, 
and she wished me, if possible, to make peace with him; that 
pi ace could be brought about only by his knowing what I knew 
of his relations with Mrs. Tilton ; therefore, she wrote a woman- 
ly, kindly letter to him; I do not remember the phraseology ; 
I remember only one phrase; it was peculiarly hers; she said 
she loved her husband with her maiden flame; Mr. Moulton 
will probably recall the whole phraseology. 



318 MBS. BEECHER INTERFERES. 

Q. What was the substance of the letter ? A. The substance 
of the letter I do not recall; the letter was returned to her; 
whether she has it or not I do not know; the object of the 
letter was to make peace; she felt that if Mr. Beecher and I 
could be reconciled, she herself and I would be more recon- 
ciled; there was a sort of mountain of clouds overcoming us. 

Q. Who had reported to her the fact that your difficulty was 
"being augmented by Mr. and Mrs. Beecher ? A. I do not know ; 
she reported it to me; it was through her that I learned that 
Mrs. Beecher was interfering with my affairs ; it was through 
Mrs. Tilton that I learned of Mrs. Beecher's antagonism to me; 
I do not think Mr. Beecher was so largely involved in it as his 
wife was. 

Q. Had you known of Mrs. Beecher's interference with your 
affairs prior to that ? A. I cannot say with my affairs — not 
with my business affairs ; with my domestic affairs ; no, as I 
recollect. Elizabeth went sometimes to the Health Lift, and 
Mrs. Beecher came there and saw her one day. 

Q. What date was that ? A. I do not know ; Mrs. Beecher, 
through Mrs. Morse, got the idea that I was Mr. Beecher's en- 
emy ; therefore Mrs. Beecher was very violently my enemy ; 
Mrs. Beecher being my enemy, and feeling that I was bent on 
a battle against her husband, sought to make an alliance with 
Elizabeth, and^as I understand, wanted Elizabeth to go away 
from me and part company, and she would not do it — the 
trouble having hinged on the fact that Elizabeth had made me 
and Mrs. Morse a confession, but had not told Mr. Beecher 
that she had done so ; I said there was only one way out of the 
difficulty, and that was that Mr. Beecher must know it. 

Q. Did you say that to Elizabeth ? A. I do not know about 
that. 

Q. Had you said it previous to that ? A. I do not know ; I 
felt greatly chagrined at her not having told him, as she s-iid 
she had; I conld not understand why Mr. Beecher should 
speak to me on the street, and I instantly said, " He does not 
know it." 

Q. You do not know when it was that he spoke to you on 
the street ? A. My impression is that it could not have been 
much later than his first coming back from the country. 

Q. When was that ? A. All I can remember of that is the 
picture of the man with a kind of sunburn on him; if you will 
ask Elizabeth all of these things she can tell you; there was a 
large mass of complications that were afterward explained. 



UNDER INFLUENCE. 319 

Q. Was not Mrs. Tilton sick on tlio evening of the 30fch of 
December and in bed ? A. I do not know whether she was or 
not. 

Q. Do not yon know that one of your allegations or com- 
plaints was that he obtained that retraction from her when she 
was sick in bed ? A. I know that she was lying in bed. 

Q, Did you not charge him with imposing upon her because 
she was sick ? A. Yes. 

Q. And was she not sick ? A. I remember the picture of 
her lying ailing on the bed. 

Q. What physician attended her? A. I think Dr. Parker; 
it may have been Dr. Stiles; he was subsequently our phy- 
sician. 

Q. This first letter which you quote from Mrs. Tilton, on 
page 35, in which she says: — "Love is praiseworthy, but to 
abuse the gift is sin; here I am strong; no temptations or fas- 
cinations," &c, what did you understand by that? A. I under- 
stood this — that she was in receipt of visits from him, and that 
she had once or twice felt that perhaps he was exercising an 
undue influence upon her; I know that once I was afraid she 
did not give me a correct account of his visits; there were a 
great many visits mentioned in her correspondence. 

Q. Have you the letters here? A. No. 

Q. I thought that you were to bring them? A. All -the orig- 
inals from which I have quoted I will carry before Judge Rey- 
nolds or any judge, in the presence of General Tracy ; I have 
great confidence in you, gentlemen, but I do not propose to 
produce the originals here ; if you will release one of your num- 
ber to go with me before any magistrate, I will produce them; 
Mr. Moulton will, of course, be asked to produce his for exam- 
ination, line for line; I do not suppose you would snatch them 
away or keep them, but at the same time I propose that if you 
would see the originals, General Tracy should go with me. 

Q. Do you refuse to produce the originals before this com- 
mittee? A. I do not refuse to produce them to the committee 
in the presence of some outside parties. 

Q. Do you refuse to produce them to the committee alone? 
A. Yes, unless I can have some friend here with me. 

Q. Why did you not take that position yesterday ? A. Be- 
cause yesterday we had only a chat. 

Q. Yes, but did you not promise to produce them? A. Yes, 
and I do now. 

Q. But you decline except in the presence of an officer ? A. 



320 THAT IS FRANK 

1 decline unless I can be perfectly certain that they will be re- 
turned to me; I don't want you to consider that as a dispar- 
agement ; it is only a necessary element in this discussion ; 
you shall see the originals, but I will only show them under 
safeguards. 

Q. Why do you make that qualification? A. For this rea- 
son: you are six gentlemen, determined, if possible, not to find 
-the facts, but to vindicate Mr. Beecher, and I am alone. There 
are eight of you and I am a single man, and if I should hand 
over to you now Mr. Beecher's apology perhaps you would not 
return it to me. Though 1 do not mean to make that implica- 
tion, 1 do not mean to give you the chance. That is frank. 

Mr. Hill — Let me say kindly, speaking on behalf of both of 
the counsel — the committee may speak for themselves — that 
the suggestion of such a theory is altogether groundless. 
General Tracy — It is not only groundless, but outrageous. 
Mr. Hill — I think you are unjust. 

Mr. Tilton — I have been informed that this is a matter of life 
and death. 

Mr. Claflin — This committee could not afford to take that 
position. It would not do to take those letters from you. 

Mr. Tilton — 1 am perfectly willing to bring several friends of 
mine and make an examination of these letters; you shall see 
them; but under proper safeguards — that is all; if Mr. Tracy 
were in my position he would take the same ground. 
General Tracy — No, he would not, I beg your pardon. 
Q. At the beginning of the acquaintance of Mr. Beecher with 
your family — not with you or your wife, but with your family 
— did not you invite him frequently to your house ? A. Yes, 
sir; and I was always very proud when he came. 

Q. Did you not say to him often that you desired him 
to visit your house frequently? A. I did, and always scolded 
him because he did not come oftener; during the -first part of 
our life we were in Oxford street, so far away that he very rarely 
came; the frequency of his visits took place after I purchased 
the house in Livingston street. 

Q. When was that? A. I have forgotten the year; I should 
say it was sewm, or eight, or nine, or ten years ngo. 

Q. Hid not you say that there was a little woman at your 
house that loved him dearly? A. I did, many a time; I al- 
ways wanted him to come oftener. 

Q. You frequently spoke to him of the high esteem and af- 
fection that your wife bore to him, did you not? A. 1 did; he 
knew it and I knew it. 



THEIR INTIMACY. 321 

Q. Yon always knew it? A. I cannot say that I always did, 
because at first, during the early years of my married life, I felt 
that Mr. Beecher rather slighted my family; he was intimate 
with me, and I think loved me; hut he did not use to come 
very often to my house, and it did not please me ; I wanted him 
to come often er. 

Q. And it wounded you, did it not? A. I cannot say that I 
was wounded; I was a mere boy; it was a matter of pride to 
have him there; Elizabeth at first was modest and frightened; 
she did not know how to talk with him, or how to entertain 
him, and it was a slow process by which he obtained her confi- 
dence so that she could talk with him; it was the same with 
Mr. Greeley; he had great reverence for her, and had an ex- 
alted opinion of her; 1 do not think there was a woman that 
he had a higher regard for than Mrs. Tilton. 

Q. And did she not have a high regard for him also ? A. 
Yes. 

Q. And that was known to you too? A. That was known 
to me, and I was very glad of it. 

Q. Mr. Greeley came to your house often? A. He used to 
come and stay sometimes in the summer a week or two at a 
time; we kept bachelor's hall; yes, he came often; it was al- 
ways a white day when Mr. Greeley came ; he used to say that 
he never would come in my absence; he said it was not a good 
habit. 

Q. Did you urge him to come when you were off lecturing? 
A. I did. 

Q. Did not you impress upon Mr. Beecher the necessity and 
desire that you had, that he would call upon your family and 
see your wife frequently during your absence? A. I did. 

Q. Now. Mr. Tilton, you have stated the religious character 
of your wife; willyou describe it again? A. My wife's religious 
character I have, if you will pardon the allusion, undertaken 
to set forth in the book that I have spent a year in writing — a 
work of fiction called "Tempest Tossed" — a name strangely 
borrowed from my own heaving breast; in that novel is a char- 
acter, Mary Vail; I do not want to say vainly before the public 
that 1 drew that character for Elizabeth, but I did; there is a 
chapter — the ninth, I think (I won't be certain about the num- 
ber) — which is called "Mary Vail's Journal;" I know it is 
good because I made it up from Elizabeth's letters, and my heart 
was cleft in twain to find in these letters some of the same sen- 
tences that crept into this chapter; I changed them consider- 
14* 



322 TEMPEST TOSSED. 

ably to make them conform to the story; I had this feeling, 
that if in this novel I could, as a mere subordinate part of the 
story, paint that character, and have it go quietly, in an under- 
handed way, forth, that it was Elizabeth (for I think I drew 
it faithfully) it would be a very thorough answer, as coming 
from me, to the scandals in the community, and that people 
would say, "Theodore respects his wife," as I do to-day. 

Q. Was it a truthful character of Elizabeth? A. It was; it 
was not drawn as well as the original would warrant. 

Q. You say it was not drawn as well as the original would 
warrant; then her devotion and purity of life would warrant a 
higher character than you have given "Mary Vail" in that 
book ? A. Yes, unless you attach a technical meaning to the 
word purity; she was made a victim. 

Q. You say that the character in that book falls below the 
original ? A. Yes, because I did not make it a prominent but 
a subordinate character. 

Q. Are there any other persons that figure in this drama 
who are described in that book, "Tempest Tossed?" A. No, 
except by mere suggestions. 

Q. Is not your true friend described there ? 

Mr. Tilton— You mean Mr. Moulton ? 

General Tracy — Yes. A. No; of the characters in "Tem- 
pest Tossed " Mary Vail is the only one that is true to life; the 
character of the colored woman was partly suggested by a col- 
ored woman that I knew. 

Q. You have brought forward the letter of your wife where 
she describes herself as having received new light, as having 
read the character of Catherine Gaunt in "Griffith Gaunt;" 
have you read the character of Catherine Gaunt? A. Yester- 
day I said no, but I have an impression that I have; a friend 
of mine yesterday morning said that it is a singular result from 
"The Terrible Temptation;" Charles Keade' has written a 
book called "The Terrible Temptation;" I have never read 
that book, but on second thought, I think I have read " Griffith 
Gaunt;" my impression is that 1 read it on a journey, and 
that I wrote something to Elizabeth about it and asked her to 
read it. 

Q. Did you think that the guilt of " Catherine Gaunt " was 
that of adultery? A. I have no idea that I did. 

Q. Has there been a change in your religious views since 
you were married? A. Yes, sir very decided, I am happy to 
say; I think there is in every sensible man's. 



SEE IS THE BEST CHRISTIAN. 323 

Q. Do you know whether the change in your religious con- 
victions was a source of great grief and sorrow to your wife? 
A. It was a great source of tears and anguish to her; she said 
to me once that denying the divinity of Christ in her view, nul- 
lified our marriage almost; and I think next to the sorrow of 
this scandal, it has caused that woman to sorrow more than 
any thing else she has suffered ; because 1 cannot look upon 
the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord God; I think her breast has 
been wrenched with it; she is almost an enthusiast on the sub- 
ject of the divinity of her Savior. 

Q. You think her a Christian, do you? A. Yes; she is the 
best Christian I know of, barring her faults; better than any 
minister. 

Q. Well, on the whole, do you not think that she is about as 
white as most Christians? A. Yes, whiter than ourselves. 

Q. Then you would not qualify the expression when you say 
that she is the best Christian you know, barring her faults ? 
Do not you think that she is the best Christian you know with 
her faults? A. No. I would not say that, because there 
has been a strong deceit wrought out in Elizabeth that comes 
from the weakness of her character; she has had three strong 
persons to circulate among — Mr. Beecher, her mother and me; 
in sentiment she outdoes us all; her life is shipwrecked, but 
she is not to blame; I will maintain that to my dying day. 

Q. Do not you know that in these exigencies she sought con- 
solation from her pastor? A. I think she did; and betook 
advantage of her orthodox views to make them the net and the 
mesh in which he ensnar< d her, and for which I hold him in a 
contempt which no English words can describe. 

Q. The change of your religious views has been the subject 
of a great deal of conversation and anguish and labor on her 
part, has it not ? A. Oh, yes — of letters and prayers and tears 
and entreaties, many a time and oft. 

Q. When you say that this has been the thing which has 
enabled her to be ensnared, do you mean by that, that you think 
that was the cause why, in some degree, her confidence in the 
judgment and advice of her pastor was increased, and why 
your influence over her was lessened ? A. Oh yes; largely so; 
thoroughly so. 

Q. Then when you found that she was leaning more strongly 
than formerly on the advice and consolation of her pastor, and 
less on your own, you attributed it naturally to your change in 
religious sentiments ? A. Yes; at the same time I did not 



32 J: MARKED FEATURE OF HER CHARACTER. 

want Elizabeth to hold my view; I said that she might be a 
Catholic or a Mohammedan. 

Q. Did she not feel that your views were a source of danger 
to the children ? A. Yes; she would not let the children have 
playthings on Sunday; John G. Whittier came to our house 
(he appointed the time), and Mr. Greeley, and met Mr. John- 
son; and it almost broke Elizabeth's heart to think that the 
best man in New England, whom she reverenced, should have, 
appointed Sunday night; she never received visitors on Sunday 

Q. Is it not a feature in her character that she has great 
reverence for those men whom she belives to be pure in life, 
and noble in thought and spirit? A. Yes; she would kiss the 
hem of their garments. 

Q. That is a marked feature of her character, is it not? A. 
Uncommonly so. 

Q. Does it not almost go to the extent of idolatry in one 
sense? A. Well, no; there are a great many women who look 
upon a man with a sense of worship; Elizabeth never did that; 
Elizabeth is the peer of any man; at the same time she reve- 
rences; it was not vanity — it was reverence; she never regarded 
Mr. Beech er as a silly woman regards him; she was not a silly 
woman taken captive; she was a wise, good woman taken cap- 
tive; there are a great many people, particularly women, who, 
if President Grant should call on them, would feel greatly flat- 
tered; I do not think she would; but if she regarded President 
Grant as man of high religious nature, coming with the Gospel 
in his hand and devoted to the evangelical religion, then, 
whether he were famous or lowly, she would reverence him. 

Q. So must there not be connected with her reverence the 
idea of absolute purity of life, as well as of religious character? 
A. Yes. I think Elizabeth regarded Mr. Beecher, in early 
days, as the essence of all that was religious, apostolic; I think 
she looked upon him very much as she would look upon the 
Apostle Paul. 

Q. And you understood that? A. Yes, and in fact looked 
upon him so in my early life; I loved that man as well as I 
ever loved a woman. 

Q. And is it not true that there is nothing that your wife so 
much abhors in man or woman as impurity? A. Exactly so. 

Q. The fact that she believed that any persons were impure, 
however, if it were otherwise, she might reverence them, would 
destroy her respect and reverence for them would it not? A. 
It would in those days. [Here Mr. Tilton gave in illustration 



ELIZABETH'S PURITY. 325 

the instance of a gentleman who his wife felt had insulted her 
by saying that he sympathized with her, and hoped that she 
would lift np her head in self-respect, remarking that Tilton's 
chief temptation had been temptation to the sin of the sexes.] 
Mr. Tilton resuming: I do not think he did it vindictively, 
but the fact that he could have done it at all, burned in her 
blood. 

Q. Was she not distressed at any suggestion of impropriety? 
A. iShe was particularly so; and she is more so now than ever, 
because in her early days such a thought was never in her 
mind; but when it had passed through her experience it came 
out with this contrition; I think that hers is one of the white 
souls; that is the truth of "the case; she never ought to have 
been taken away from her home; you gentlemen did it; you 
did it, M r. Tracy. " Thou art the man." 

Q. Will you state more distinctly than you have done what 
you understand by that letter of February 3d, 1868, in which 
she says: — "Love is praiseworthy, but to abuse the gift is sin. 
There I am strong. No temptation or fascination could cause 
me to yield my womanhood ? " A. I quoted that letter to 
show how strong her views were at that time. 

Q. Did you quote it for the purpose of showing that at that 
time she was being tempted? A. I have heard her say the 
substance of that over and over again. 

Q. When? A. I do not know when; a long time ago, years 
ago, when he (Mr. Beecher) used to go there; it was not be- 
cause I bad any suspicion of him then; Elizabeth always felt 
that when Mr. Beecher went to such and such a place there 
were women that would flatter him; I do not think she did at 
all; she has always been a stickler for the honor of her sex; 
she said to herself, "I will represent my sex." 

Q. In other words, she wanted to show him purity of senti- 
ment, and of communion of mind without passion? A. That 
is what she meant, I think. 

Q. That is what you understood her to mean ? A. That is 
exactly what I understood her to mean. 

Q. For years ? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. That is the way you looked upon the relation between 
them for years ? A. I ought to say for the earlier years. 

Q. When did you first bring to your wife's attention the fact 
that you feared that there was something wrong? A. Eliza- 
beth so blotted that out of my mind that I did not think of it 
again. 



326 HE IS A RESTLESS MAW. 

Q. How long ago was it ? Years ago? A. Yes, as I recol- 
lect it, it must have been during the early years when we lived 
in Livingston street, in our present house. 

Q. How long have you lived there ? A. I do not know. 

Mr. Winslow — About ten years, I remember. 

General Tracy — It was a great many years ago ? A. Yes. 

Q. Was it before 1868 ? A. Long before. 

Mr. Claflm— In '64, probably. 

General Tracy— Was it before 1865 ? A. About 1862. 

Q. Where did you live at the beginning of the war? A. I 
am very much ashamed that I am never able to answer such a 
question. 

Q. You say that it was in the early years of your living at 
No. 174 Livingston street ? A. Yes; pictures are vivid to me, 
and I remember where Elizabeth was sitting in the corner of 
my parlor; I spoke to her about it when wo came home. 

Q. How long since was it that you have mentioned that sub- 
ject to any one until you put it in this communication ? A. 
She blotted it out of my mind. 

Q. Did you ever speak of it to any one? A. She blotted out 
all wrong as concerning her in the circumstance. 

Q. You never mentioned it to Mr. Beecher? A. I was very 
young in those days and utterly unsuspicious of such things, 
and when I spoke to her about it she was a little confused and 
denied it; and then said it was so, but that she had said " You 
must not do that;" I had in those days something of the same 
reverence for Mr. Beecher that I have since so eminently lost. 

Q. Do you know who was present besides your wife and Mr. 
Beecher? A. Nobody. 

Q. There was nobody there but you three — you were looking 
at engravings ? A. Yes. 

By Mr. Winslow — Were you sitting on the floor ? A. Not 
the whole of the time; I remember that those two were sitting- 
down on the floor with the pictures; I am a restless sort of 
man, and I do not know where I was; it was a long time a^o. 

Q. Do you say that you saw it with your own eyes ? A. With 
my own eyes. 

Q. Do you remember whether Mr. Beecher looked at you 
first? A. No; he did not know that I noticed it; I was stand- 
ing up, I think; I have to bring up the picture in my mind; I 
do not remember exactly whether I was standing or sitting; 
perhaps I was in a chair; I know that there was a kind of port- 
folio folded out and that the pictures were folded down (indi- 



THE ANKLE SCENE. 327 

eating with the hands); she was sitting on the floor or on a 
stool, and he on the floor. 

Q. Were you where he could see you ? A. He was looking 
at 1 he pictures. 

Q. If he had looked up would he have seen you ? A. Yes. 

By General Tracy — You were looking at some pictures in 
the room ? A. Yes; these things were on her lap. 

Q. What part of her person did he touch ? A. Her ankles 
and lower limbs. 

By Mr. Winslow — Not above the knee ? A. No. If he had 
he probably would have been struck; it was a question in my 
mind whether a minister could consider that a proper sort of 
caress. 

Q. Was it done slyly ? A. Yes, very slyly; his right or left 
arm was under her dress. 

By General Tracy — How were they sitting ? A. My impres- 
sion is that she was sitting on some little stool and he on the 
floor by her side, and that some pictures were, perhaps, put up 
against the chair and folded, and that it was by an accidental 
brushing up ol* her dress that I saw his hand on her ankle. 

Q. Do you know whether it was accidental or casual with 
him? A. I only know that I asked her. 

Q. Could you know whether it was accidental or intentional ? 
A. I spoke of it to her; she at first denied it and then con- 
fessed it, and said that she had chidden him; I did not attach 
much importance to it after the explanation was made. 

Q. You were in doubt whether it was intentional or acci- 
dental? A. It was merely a suspicion. 

Q. How about the bedchamber scene ? A. That was a long 
while ago, and that was blotted out of my mind too. 

Q. When was it ? A. I do not remember the year; it was a 
good while ago. 

By Mr. Winslow — Before or after the ankle scene? A. 
Before. 

Q. How long? A. I do not know. 

Q. Before 18G8? A. I do not know. 

Q. After you were living in Livingston street ? A. Yes; I 
remember the room; again, I identify it by the picture; it was 
in the left hand room; I have two front rooms on the second 
story, and it was the left hand' of these two rooms; I knocked 
at the door and Elizabeth came ; I was surprised that it was 
locked ; she was surprised at finding me ; Mr. Beecher was sit- 
ting in a red plush rocking chair — a sort of Ottoman chair — 



32S BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. 

with his vest unbuttoned; his face colored like a rose when I 
saw him. 

Q. How long ago was that? A. I do not know. 

Q. How long had you lived in Livingston street at this time ? 
A. Do not remember. 

Q. Had you lived there for two or three years ? A. That I 
^do not know; I should say I had lived there, perhajjs, two 
years. 

Q. Was it during the war? A. That I do not know. 

Q. Do you know whether it was before or after your visit to 
Port Sumter? A. No. 

Q. The explanation was satisfactory to you on that occasion ? 
A. Entirely so. 

Q. So that you let it be, and attributed nothing to it? A, 
Yes, I attributed nothing to it; if the door had been simply 
shut, I should have thought nothing of it, but the door being 
locked I wondered at it. 

Q. Was there more than one door leading to that room? A. 
One door comes in from the hall. 

Q. Was there any other door leading into the room from the 
other room ? A. There is a middle door communicating be- 
tween the two rooms. 

Q. Two sliding doors? A. Yes. 

Q. And was there a door leading from the hall to the other 
room ? A. Yes, that is the plan oi' the house. 

Q. And the room that Mr. Beecher and your wife were in 
was a room communicating with another room with sliding 
doors ? A. Yes. 

Q. What was that room used for that Mr. Beecher was in? 
A. A bedroom. 

Q. Was there a bed in it? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. Is the other room a sitting room? A. It is. 

Q. Did you try that door which led into the sitting room? 
A. No. 

Q. Why? A. Because I came and knocked at the hall door. 

Q. For aught you know, they had gone into the sitting room 
from the hall, and from there Mr. Beecher may have gone into 
the bedroom? A. Yes; 1 will give them the beneiit of the 
doubt. 

Q. Was it explained to your satisfaction? A. Yes. 

Q. What was the explanation that satisfied you? A. The 
annoyance of the children ; my wife said that our children and 
some of the neighbors' children were making a noise, and she 



UE NEVER BLAZONED IT. 329 

wanted to have a quiet talk with Mr. Beecher, and so she 
locked herself in. 

Q. That satisfied you? A. That satisfied me; it was entirely 
reasonable; I only quote it as a suspicion. 

Q. Do you remember whether the sliding doors leading from 
this room to the sitting room were open ? A. They were shut; 
I remember it because I looked in; I saw the two white doors 
coming together; the picture is distinct to my mind; I do not 
forget pictures. 

By Mr. Clan 1 in — Q. Was the door opened immediately ? A. 
Yes; I do not want you to think that I thought there was any- 
thing wrong at that interview at all. 

Q. The picture of the room was the only reason you have for 
believing that the sitting room door was shut? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. Did the explanation so satisfy you that that thing was 
blotted from your remembrance? A. Yes. 

Q. So you have never regarded that circumstance as evidence 
of wrong in any one ? A. No. 

Q. Have you ever mentioned that? A. I rather think I 
have. 

Q. Why? A. Because afterwards there arose circumstances 
which made me feel that the explanation which she had given 
of these two events was not true. 

By Mr. Winslow — To whom did you state it? A. I think 
to my mother ; I do not recollect; I never made any blazonry 
of it, you know, abroad ; I never thought, really, that there 
was any wrong in it until in the light of subsequent events; I 
do not say now that there was any wrong in it; Elizabeth al- 
ways denied stoutly to me that anything wrong had taken 
place at that time. 

Q. What kind of a room was that sitting room? A. It was 
the common sitting room of the house. 

Q. The right hand part was the sitting room, and the left 
hand part was the bedroom communicating with it by sliding 
doors ? A. Yes. 

Q. That is, where you receive your intimate friends? A. 
Yes. 

Q. If you had found Mr. Beecher with your wife in the sit- 
ting room you would have found him where you should have 
expected to find him, would you not ? A. Yes. 

Q. If the door had not been locked you would not have 
thought anything of it? A. No; I should have been happy to 
have seen him ; we were in the best possible relations in those 



330 IN A VAPOROUS CLOUD. 

days; nobody was a more welcome guest at our house than he. 

Q. Now, Mr. Tilton, can vou say whether this scene was 
before the date of that letter of February 3d, 18G8 ? A. Yes, it 
must have been a long time before that, I think ; I won't be 
certain ; it must have been a long time before 1868. 

Q. You say that her letters informed you that Mr. Beecher 
bal made twelve pastoral visits at your house in five weeks ? 
A. I have those letters. 

By Mr. Hill — You have all the letters from which you say 
you discovered that the twelve visits were made when you were 
away ? A. Yes. 

Q. And those you will produce ? A. I think that perhaps I 
will. 

By General Tracy — It was written here (in Mr. Tilton's com- 
munication) six and changed to five weeks — which is correct ? 
A. (After some explanations.) It is correct as it is there. 

Q. You say, Mr. Tilton, for a year after what you state as 
Mrs. Tilton's confession, she insisted to you that she had not 
violated her marriage vow? A. Yes; Elizabeth was in a sort 
of vaporous like cloud; she was between light and dark; she 
could not see that it was wrong; she maintained to her mother 
in my presence that she had not done wrong; she cannot bear 
to do wrong; a sense of having done wrong is enough to crush 
her; she naturally seeks for her own peace a conscientious ver- 
dict; she never would have had these relations if she had sup- 
posed at the time that they were wrong; Elizabeth never does 
anything that at the time seems wrong; for such a large moral 
nature, there is a lack of a certain balance and equipose ; she 
has not a will that guides and restrains; but Elizabeth never 
does at any time that which does not have the stamp of her 
conscience at the time upon it. 

Q. Do you say that she did or did not insist that she had 
violated her marriage vows? A. She always was saying that 
"it never seemed to her wrong;" and "Theodore, I do not see 
that I have wronged you." 

Q. What do you understand her as meaning by "To love is 
praiseworthy, but the abuse of love is sin ? " A. I rather think 
she meant carrying love to too great an extent. 

Q. Would not that include criminal relations ? A. Yes. 

Q. Then you understand her, as early as 1868, as saying that 
the abuse of the gift of love by adultery would be a sin ? A.. 
Y r es. 

Q. She is a lady of intelligence, is she not 9 A. She is in 



ELIZABETH A CRITIC. 331 

some respects a lady of extraordinary intelligence; she has a 
remarkable gift at times which anybody might envy; there is 
no tiling low about Elizabeth. 

Q. Is she a lady of large reading ? A. There are very few 
ladies of larger reading; she was educated at the Packer Insti- 
tute; I do not think she took quite a full course; she reads 
much to her blind aunt and to the children; I used to read a 
good deal to her; she was a good critic; Mr. Beecher carried 
to her sheets of his "Life of Christ" and many chapters of 
"Norwood; I used to read to her many things. 

Q. What do you say about the "Lite of Christ" and "Nor- 
wood" — that he carried them to her to criticise? A. Yes, or 
not exactly to criticise; she is not a critic in the sense that she 
can take a particular phrase and change the language of it; 
but she could tell whether a little speech put into Rose Went- 
wortlvs mouth was one a woman would be likely to say. 

Q. He took those chapters to read to her for that purpose, 
having a high regard for her opinion in that matter — not as 
high regard for her opinion in a strictly critical sense? A. 
No; but in the sense whether it was womanly, and larger than 
that, whether it touched human sympathy or not. I remember 
that he took her the first sheet of the "Life of Christ; she 
wrote to me saying, " lie said he had not read it to anybody 
else." 

Q. When did he write " Norwood ? " A. I do not know. 

Q. When did he write his first volume of his "Life of 
Christ ? " A. It was after " Norwood," I think. 

Q. It was published after "Norwood?" A. I do not know 
about that. 

Q. You know he took it to her to read ? A. I know, be- 
cause she wrote it in her letters; I believe she told the truth; 
you ask about "Norwood" and the "Life of Christ;" he had 
brought the opening part of the "Life of Christ" and I think 
also chapters of "Norwood." 

Q. You understand that he brought them to her for the pur- 
pose of criticism ? A. Yes. 

Q. You yourself would regard her as an admirable critic? 
A. Oh, yes; 1 always liked to take everything I wrote to Eliza- 
beth ; sometimes when I thought I had written anything par- 
ticularly nice I ran down and read it to her; she was one of 
the best of critics; she never praised an article because it was 
mine or his, but only when she liked it. 

Q. You found her judgment not warped by her affections in 



332 THEODORE RATED THE CHURCH. 

that? A. No, that is the particular feature of her character: 
if a lady were sitting at the piano and playing, and Elizabeth 
loved that lady very much, she would tell her about the play- 
ing — that it was good or that it was not — but she would not 
say that the playing was good because she loved the woman ; 
she would not say so unless it was good ; I was always quite 
certain that if Elizabeth liked what I wrote she did not like it 
on my account, though she was glad when I wrote a good thing ; 
it was an honest criticism ; if I had been a minister .none of 
this trouble would have come ; she was always in sorrow that I 
was not a minister — which is the only virtue that I possess; 
thank God that I do not belong to the priesthood or the 
church; it may not be an acceptable statement to the com- 
mittee. 

Q. Do you mean by that, Mr. Tilton, that the want of strong 
religious feature in your character was what she missed in you ? 
A. No, Mr. Tracy, it was not that; because, though I should 
not like to say it of myself, yet I am a more religious man than 
most men of my acquaintance — that is, I am a man of religious 
sympathies who thoroughly hates and despises religious creeds; 
f do not believe in one of the thirty-nine articles, nor in either 
of the catechisms, nor in the divinity injunction of the Scrip- 
tures, nor in the divinity of Christ, in the sense in which it is 
held. I believe his writings to be enflooded by the Divine 
breath. It was not that I lack religious spirit. A man ought 
not to say that, perhaps, of himself, but I do not lack the re- 
ligious spirit; I love God, and am fond of religious sentiment, 
but I hate the creeds; I was taught to hate them during the 
anti-slavery controversy ; I saw the churches selling the negroes, 
and I despise a church ; now put it down there (to a reporter); 
say that I despise the church, and generally despise ministers. 

Q. Well, it was that lack of reverence for the church and its 
ordinances and your lack of belief in the divinity of Christ as 
she held it that she missed in you ? A. Yes. 

Q. And she grieved over it? A. Oh yes, indeed; grieved 
over it with tears. 

Q. And what she found wanting in you she found in Mr. 
Beecher, did she not? A. Yes, she did, and he took advant- 
age of it; that is why I say he ought to spend the rest of his 
life in penitence and anguish; if Mr. Beecher had held the 
same religious views that I hold, and gone to that house deny- 
ing the divinity of Christ, he never could have made any ap- 
proach to her, and the affection and love which she bore to him 



ELIZABETH A MYSTIC. 333 

would never have existed — I mean the strong affection — it could 
not possibly have done so i 

Q. The enthusiasm for him which she felt would never have 
existed in that case? A. No. 

Q. You have no doubt that it was that feature in his char- 
acter which roused her enthusiasm and made him to her a sort 
of poem, did it not ? A. Yes, a sort of apostle ; I think she 
regarded Mr. Beecher almost as though Jesus Christ himself 
had walked in ; that is an extravagant expression, but you 
must not take it literally; I know that she wanted to make the 
children look upon the clergy with reverence; she ought to be 
an intense Roman Catholic, like Mme. Guion — a mystic; I 
think she certainly spends hours on her knees some days; I 
don't suppose a day ever passes over Elizabeth that the sun, if 
he could peep through the windows, would not see her on her 
knees, and my oldest daughter, Florence, though she look's like 
me, is like her mother; here has come this great calamity on 
my house; there was that publication last night; she saw it; 
and this morning what did she do ? I heard a noise in the 
house, and found that she was down in the front parlor playing 
on the melodeon like a heroine, standing in the midst of this 
calamity like a rock in the sea; she gets that somewhat from 
me; I can stand all storms; she gets also from her mother the 
religious inspiration; Florence this morning had a genius for 
religion, when you would suppose that she would have been 
crushed; you (General Tracy) are not stronger in the court 
room than she was this morning at that musical instru- 
ment. 

Q. You use the expression in regard to your daughter "genius 
for religion ; " does not that express the character of your wife ? 
A. Yes — even more so; my daughter is more intellectual; she 
is an abler and more stable woman, though not so sentimental, 
"and less demonstrative; they are both great characters. 

Q. Well, she is a character who could have an intimacy and 
reverence and enthusiasm for a man of Mr. Beecher's tempera- 
ment and religious convictions and teachings, and carry it to an 
extreme length without the thought of passion or criminality? 
A. I do not think the thoughts of passion and of criminality 
were in her breast at all; I think they were altogether in his; 
I think she thought only of her love and reverence. 

Q, Such a character would not excite the thought of jeal- 
ousy as to her? A. Not in the slightest; I never had the 
slightest feeling of jealousy in regard to Elizabeth. 



334 SHE LO VED H. W. B. 

Q. The fact that she was manifesting this enthusiasm and 
all that, would not lead you to suspect her motives and purity 
originally ? A. It would not; later it did. 

Q. For how long a period ? A. I do not know ; I remember 
I wrote her some letters which, if she has kept them, would fix 
the date ; there was a time when I felt that Mr. Beecher was 
using his influence greatly upon her. 

Q. To control her in her domestic relations with you? A. 
No, but to win her; he was always trying to get her to say 
that she loved him better than me. 

Q. She never would say it ? A.I don't think she ever did. 

Q. You do not believe she ever felt or believed it, do you ? 
A. No ; that is to say, in one sense she loved him ; she loved 
his rehgious views, the loved him as an evangelical minister; 
but I don't think that on the whole he was as much to her as 
I was ; still, of course, Mr, Tracy, I cannot question her mo- 
tives ; if she should say he was more to her than I was I can- 
not dispute it. 

Q,. You set out a letter that she wrote on the night of De- 
cember 30th, after you returned to your house, referring to the 
retraction she had given to Mr. Beecher; did she write that 
letter or did you ? A. She wrote it. 

Q. Did you dictate it? A. No. 

Q. Why did she write it ? A. Because I asked her to make 
a calm statement of what she had designed in this letter to Mr. 
Beecher. She was in such a state of agony that she told me 
she could not recall her letter to him; she said she had given 
him this letter that he might fortify himself in a council of 
ministers ; I asked her to take a pen at the end of the evening 
and give the exact circumstances and explain what she meant 
by it, and she wrote that letter; it was only the next day that 
the other letter came back, and then this one ceased to be of 
any importance ; what struck me in that business as so damna- 
ble in Mr. Beecher, was that after coming and confessing to 
me and Mr. Moulton his criminal relations with Mrs. Tilton, 
and then asking to see her a few minutes, and going around 
the corner to see her, he should have come back again in half 
an hour, expressing his absolute heartbrokenness, whereas he 
had in his pocket this retraction from her; I say it was dam- 
nable and nefarious. 

Q. Do you say that when you saw Mr. Beecher at Mr. Moul- 
ton's house Mr. Moulton was present ? A. Yes, he was pres- 
ent in this way — I wanted a lengthy interview with Mr. Beecher 



THE RETRACTION. 335 

alone, and when he came into the room I locked the door and 
put the key in my pocket, and narrated in order, Elizabeth's 
confession; it was a long one, and it would have been indeli- 
cate for me to touch it with any more elaboration than I have 
here; I do not wish to be questioned about it; it was a long 
story. 

Q. Was Mr. Moulton present ? A. Not at that part of the 
interview; after the door was opened he was; the interview 
that we three together had, was very short ; I was on the stairs 
while Mr. Beecher talked with Mr. Moulton on the stairs; that 
interview was to bring me and Mr. Beecher together; the next 
time we all three had an interview. 

Q. This retraction, you say in your communication, Mr. 
Beecher returned to you through Mr. Moulton; is that true? 
A. Yes, sir. 

Q. Was that retraction ever delivered to you ? A. I have 
got it now. 

Q. Is it not in the possession of Mr. Moulton ? A. Yes, but 
it belongs to me ; Mr. Moulton had a safe place and I had not, 
and he has some of my papers. 

Q. Do you mean to say that Mr. Moulton delivered that 
retraction to your actual keeping, and that you have had 
j)ossession of it lor any length of time ? A. He did deliver it 
to me, and it was sent back to him. 

Q. I ask you whether Mr. Moulton delivered that retraction 
to you and you kept it? A. Mr. Moulton put that retraction 
into my hand; exactly what I did with it — whether I carried 
it to my safe or not — I do not remember; I took a number of 
papers and put them in his keeping because I had no safe 
place. 

Q. How long do you think you had possession of that paper ? 
A. I do not remember; I never saw the retraction till it was 
brought back to me; then I read it; it may be that I never 
took it away from Mr. Moulton's house; it was sent back to 
me ; it was put into my hand ; I read it, and I made a copy 
of it. 

Q. In short-hand ? A. Yes. 

Q. Did you ever have it longer than that ? A. Yes ; long 
enough to make forty copies in short-hand. 

Q. But you returned it to Mr. Moulton, and he has kept it 
and has it now ? A. Yes ; unless he has been robbed. 

Q. The letter which you say Mr. Beecher wrote Mrs. Tilton, 
with your permission, I see, as published, directs her to return 
it to him through your hands. A. Yes. 



33G TRUSTED TO MOULTON IN CONFIDENCE. 

Q. Was it returned to him through your hands ? A. It was 
returned to Mr. Moulton by me. 

Q. Did you make a copy of it ? A. I did. 
Q. Then you took advantage of Mr. Beecher's direction to 
have that letter returned to him through your hands, to make 
a copy, and you made and preserved a copy of the letter ? A. 
I did, exactly ; and I have found a very good use for it in this 
late emergency. 

Q. What you call the " apology " — is that in Mr. Beecher's 
handwriting? A. It is not. 

Q. In whose handwriting is it ? A. In Francis D. Moul- 
ton's, except the last sentence, which is Mr. Beecher's. 

Q. " I trust this to Moulton in confidence/"' is in Mr. Beech- 
er's handwriting, is not not? A. Yes. 

Q. The words "in confidence" are underscored, are they 
not ? A. I do not know. 

Q. That document is written on how many half sheets of 
paper ? A. I do not think on any ; it is on sheets as big as 
that (legal cap). 

Q. On how many — two or three? A. Yes, large sheets. 
Q. Do you know whether the last sentence, "I trust this to 
Moulton in confidence," is separated by a wide space from the 
rest ? A. I do not know ; Frank can show it to you. 

Q. Is it not separated by a wide space ? No, not by a wide 
space. 

Q. I ask you whether the last sentence of the letter is not 
here somewhere (indicating with the hand), and the line " I 
trust this to Moulton in confidence, H. W. Beecher," down 
there (indicating) ? A. No, it is not. 

Q. Is it not at the bottom of the page ? A. It may be at 
the bottom of the page. 

Q. Is it not away from the writing? A. No, it is not; it is a 
part of the letter. 

Q. You were not present when it was written ? A. No ; 
otherwise it would not have been written. 

Q. Because it would have been spoken ? A. Yes; the sub- 
stance was spoken to me a day or two afterwards in Mr. Moul- 
ton's bedchamber. 

Q. You say if you had been present it would not have been 
written ? A. Yes. 

Q. That letter is not addressed to you, is it ? A. It was ad- 
dressed to Mr. Moulton, but it was brought to me on the 
authority of Mr. Beecher himself; it was brought to me 



THEY HAD A CONTROVERSY. 337 

greatly to my surprise; Mr. Monlton put it before me as evi- 
dence that I should maintain peace; 1 did not ask for it; it 
came unsolicited. 

Q. You quote a letter dated on the 7th of January to you 
from Mr. Beecher. Was your suit with Bowen then pending? 
A. My suit with Bowen was pending from the 1st of January 
to the middle of the next year; I think it was in April, 1872 ; 
I never sued him ; Mr. Moulton wanted to assume the manage- 
ment of my affairs with Mr. Bowen; Mr. Moulton, when sick, 
summoned us to him, and said, "I want to keep you on record 
and bind you to good will." 

Q. You had a controversy? A. I had a controversy; I 
agreed not to do anything but at Mr. Moulton's discretion; 
Mr. Bowen owed me $7,000, and Frank said, "He has got to 
pay that; but I would rather pay it myself than that it should 
bring Mr. Beecher in collision, and I will agree that you shall 
have it, if I have to pay it myself; therefore, let this thing 
remain with me as long as I like — a year or ten years; " Frank 
was determined that peace should be kept. 

Q. Were there any proceedings to perpetuate testimony 
taken ? A. Frank thought Mr. Bowen ought to come to a 
settlement, and said, " I think I will put this in court; " and 
Mr. Ward instituted some proceedings; it was the mere sug- 
gestion of a suit, done without my knowledge; I think it was 
to perpetuate Mr. Johnson's testimony; I have forgotten. 

Q. That was in 1872 ? A. Yes, it must have been in 
March. 

Q. You say you put the management of your matter against 
Bowen in the hands of Moulton? A. I did. 

Q. Did not he represent to you that it was absolutely indis- 
pensable or material that you and Mr. Beecher should keep on 
friendly terms in reference to this controversy with Bowen ? 
A. No. The sum and essence of his management was the 
management of my relations to Mr. Beecher; he regarded Mr. 
Bowen as an incident; 1 could not afford to lose my office, and 
Mr. Moulton said, " You have got to keep peace with Mr. 
Beecher for the sake of yourself and family;" Mr. Moulton 
always made Mr. Bowen subsidiary to Mr. Beecher — and me 
also, till 1 revolted, after Dr. Bacon's letter. 

Q. Do you mean to say that it was never regarded as import- 
ant that friendly relations should be maintained between you 
and Mr. Beecher, having reference to your difficulty with 
Bowen ? A. Not a particle : the more I quarreled with Mr. 
15 



33S MO ULTON'S IRON-LIKE WA Y. 

Beecher, the better Mr. Bowen liked it; if, as a result of the 
controversy, Mr. Beecher should be dead, Mr. Bowen would 
not be one of the mourners, but one that would uplift the 
horn of gladness; he never wanted peace with Mr. Beecher ; 
he is an enemy of Mr. Beecher, would rejoice in his downfall; 
perhaps I ought not to say that; it is speaking of the motives 
of people, but it is true. 

Q. The triparite treaty was not signed until after February 
7th, 1871 ? A. No. 

Q. Was not your letter to Mr. Moulton of that date written 
for the purpose of calling out a reply from him ? A. No; I 
wrote it because Frank insisted upon it; Frank had the idea 
that if I gave my word he would have me bound; he wanted 
me to write the utmost of what I could of good will in this 
letter. 

Q. And did he get a corresponding answer from Mr. Beecher ? 
A. Perhaps so; I do not think that he informed me that he 
was going to get an answer from Mr. Beecher. 

Q. He informed you that he had got an answer from him 
afterwards, did he not ? A. Yes, he showed it to me and I 
copied it. 

Q. Do you say that your letter was not written in order to 
draw out an answer from Mr. Beecher ? A. No, I wrote it to 
please Frank, because he wanted me to; perhaps there may 
be a sense in which I was to write what I could of good will, 
and Mr. Beecher what he could of good will; perhaps there 
may be correctness in your phrase; there was no collusion on 
my part with Mr. Beecher; It was Mr. Moul ton's iron-like 
Avay of compelling things to go on in peace and harmony; 
he is a man of desperate strength of will. 

Q. Now, will you produce all the letters which you quote on 
page 113 and 114 of your communication, beginning "My 
dear Frank, I am determined to make no more resistance. 
Theodore's temperament is such that the future, even if tem- 
porarily earned, would be absolutely worthless, and rendering 
me liable at any time of day ? " etc. A. 1 cannot; Mr. Moulton 
can. 

Q. Have you a copy of it ? A. Yes, I think I am not wrong. 

Q. Can you produce a copy ? A. I do not know ; I am 
sorry 1 cannot tell you ; I have a mass of phonographic notes; 
whenever these letters came, whenever there was anything 
in them that Frank wanted me to see, he would read to me; 
whenever Mr. Beecher said anything that he thought, being 



DIFFIC UL TIES Til A T EN VIRON ME. 3 39 

reaa to me, would gratify my feelings and conduce to a 
compromise or peace between us, speaking of the kindness with 
which I treated him, or of his difficulties, Frank read them to 
me, and as I wrote short-hand, I always used to make a copy of 
them. 

Q. And is that the only copy that you have of these papers ? 
A. It is the only copy I have of Frank's papers. 

Q. Copies in short-hand being read and never being com- 
pared with the originals ? A. When Frank read to me three 
or four or five sentences I would write them down. 

By Mr. Hall — Did you compare them with the originals? 
A. What do you mean by comparing them with the originals? 

Q. Do you know that they are an exact transcript of the 
originals ? A. Yes. 

Q. You wto te them from your phonographic notes? A. 
You will find these extracts all perfectly correct — every one 
absolutely. 

By Mr. Winslow — Do you remember the purport of what 
you left out? A. My impression is that this one of Mr. 
Beecher's letters to Frank was very long; it would certainly 
occupy four pages of foolscap; there was a long argument in 
it to show the difficulties that he was in; if I had quoted the 
whole it would have made this statement much stronger, but 
it would have made it a cumbered document. 

Q. Is there something that you have not quoted ? A. A 
great deal ; but there is nothing in that quotation that violates 
the whole spirit of the letter. 

Q. Had you no reason for omitting what you did, except to 
avoid length? A. No; only it alluded to interviews; for 
instance, in this way: — "I am greatly distressed with what 
the deacon said," or "The Brooklyn Eagle must not go on 
in this way;" many things might be added that are unimport- 
ant in this exhibit but were important at the time. 

Q. On page 103, " No man can see the difficulties that 
environ me," etc., did you quote the whole of that letter ? A. 
Only a fragment of it; there is not a whole letter in all these 
quotations. 

Q. In making these quotations I see no stars ? A. I do not 
know whether it is the omission of the printer ; but I put in 
stars to show where the connection was broken off; where I 
took a paragraph which was long and it was continuous from 
beginning to end there is no need of stars. 

Q. Your letter " To a Complaining Friend," that was pub- 



340 "COMPLAINING FRIEND ," A FICTION. 

lished, to whom was that written ? A. That was written to 
nobody; everybody was saying "You ought to answer the 
Woodlmll scandal," and I put my wits together to frame a pos- 
sible answer. 

Q. Then you say that the letter " To a Complaining Friend " 
was a fiction? A. Yes, it was written on purpose as a public 
card. 

" Q. How long after the Woodhull scandal was that ? A. It 
was published a long time after that date ; not longer than 
two or three weeks I think, perhaps not ten days; my impres- 
sion is that it was not published until a long time after; I 
thought I had written an ingenious card, but it did not amount 
to anything; Wendell Phillips said, "It is a fine thing but for 
one thing; you ought to have said that your wife was not 
guilty;" but I could not say that, and the card went for noth- 
ing; it was one of a number of ingenious subterfuges; I wrote 
it thinking that it would please Elizabeth; I read it to her 
before it was printed and she liked it; afterwards she spoke to 
me violently about it, and said it was another way of perpet- 
uating the scandal. 

Q. And charged you with publishing it for that purpose? 
A. No, not that. 

Q. But did not she say that the effect of that publication 
would be to perpetuate the scandal and revive it? A. Yes, 
after it was published. 

Q. The Woodhull scandal was dying out of the minds of the 
people, was it not, then, when that was published ? A. I think 
not; I did not know the time when it was ; it is a death of 
which I have had no notice yet; I thought I did a crafty thing 
in that card, but it failed. 

Q. I asked whether the Woodhull scandal was not dying 
out of the minds of the people, and whether it would not have 
died out but for that? A. Well, I don't know.; you are a 
better judge of that than I am ; I think I heard less of it. 

Q. Do you not know that the publication of that letter 
revived the talk and scandal ? A. Yes, yes; everything revives 
the talk ; the appointment of an investigating committee 
revived it in the same way, in general terms. 

Q. What other publications have you made since the publi- 
cation of the Woodhull scandal and the letter (i To a Com- 
plaining Friend," and the Bacon letter, and the letters to the 
Council? A. The letter "To a complaining Friend" was 
put in the Eagle with a ferocious comment; if it had not been 



SCANDAL WOULD HAVE DIED OUT. 3^1 

printed with a bad comment, I think it would have had a good 
effect; but that letter did harm. 

Q. You mean to say that it revived or perpetuated the 
scandal instead of allaying it ? A. It did harm in the sense 
that it purported to be a denial, looked as if it was meant for a 
denial which did not deny; and it left about this impression — 
that Mr. Tilton, a direct man, who knows what he means and 
could say it, if he could have denied this squarely would 
have done it; the impression was that it was written to 
deny, but that it did not deny. 

Q. Did it not carry in it a strong implication of guilt ? A. 
"Well, perhaps in a sense you might inferentially say so ; I think 
you might say that; I think if I had never said a word on the 
subject at all, from the beginning down, it would have been a 
great deal better. 

Q. The scandal would have died out long ago, would it not ? 
It has only been kept alive by your writings ? A. I have acted 
like a fool, I admit. 

By Mr. Tracy. — We all concede that, and do not need to call 
witnesses to prove it. 

Q. Now, when the council was in session, that took the 
form, did it not, of an ecclesiastical controversy, in which the 
scandal proper dropped out of sight ? A. There is no scandal 
proper. 

Q. Well, this scandal itself dropped out of sight, and the 
controversy was over an ecclesiastical question, was it not? 
A. In a technical sense; but everybody said the council revived 
the business. 

Q. Did not you know that your letters revived the scandal ? 
A. Yes; or it did not need reviving— it had life in it. 

Q. Did not your letters to the council largely call out the 
letters by Dr. Bacon ? A. I think Dr. Bacon took a sublime 
indifference to my letters in the first place; he sent them back 
from the council ; I do not now recollect that there was any 
extract from my letters to the council that were introduced at 
all by Dr. Bacon; perhaps there was; if he made any allusion 
at all to them it was a most unimportant one. 

Q. You knew that the effect of your letters to the council 
would be to revive the scandal, did you not ? A. No, I did 
not; I wrote to them to vindicate myself; I did not care 
whether they revived the scandal or not. 

Q. Did not you know what the effect would be ? A. I 
thought of vindicating myself; I had been attacked and I wrote 



342 1 TOLD YOU A FALSEHOOD. 

a defence; the scandal had to take care of itself; I was not so 
tender toward the scandal that I should refrain from defend- 
ing myself if it would revive it even. 

Q. That is evident Mrs. Tilfcon's letter to you quoted Feb- 
ruary 9th, 1868, and commencing, "Ah! did angel ever love so 
grandly as my beloved." In that letter, on page 164, this sen- 
tence occurs, "And the dear friends who love us." You orig- 
inally wrote it, and you have erased "us" and put in "me." 
Do you know which is correct? What is the original ? A. I 
think it is "me;" it is "me" (examining the first draft of 
tie communication.) 

Q. How came Mrs. Tilton to write that letter to Moulton, 
denying that she had ever thought of separating from you? 
A. Frank, as soon as he undertook to make the compromise 
between us, undertook to straighten out whatever was wrong; 
there was a story that Mrs. Morse set afloat about my being 
divorced, and Frank wrote a note to her or went to see her, and 
she wrote this note. 

Q. Did not she write it at your suggestion ? A. I do not 
think she did; I think she wrote it at Frank's suggestion; I 
had forgotten that letter until I found it among the papers. 

Mr. Hill — Did not you make any suggestion to her about 
writing that letter? A. I do not recollect distinctly; it may 
be that I did; I do not know; I co-operated with Frank. 

General Tracy — Has she not during this controversy signed 
letters that you have written for her? A. No; she wrote a 
letter to Dr. Storrs, a part of which I suggested the phraseolo- 
gy, of a delicate statement of her relations to Mr. Beecher, 
which, while it was not false, did not convey more than half 
of the truth; the remainder she wrote herself; she was going 
to state too much in it. 

Q. Is there any other letter that she has ever written at your 
dictation, and signed after you had written it, in this contro- 
versy ? A. Well, I do not know ; I do not recollect any at 
present. 

Q. Do you remember a "letter that she wrote Mr. Moulton, 
commencing, "Dear Francis, I told you a falsehood last night?" 
A. I never saw it. 

Q. Do you remember that Mr. Moulton reported to you, on 
any occasion, that she had made a statement that what you 
claimed was her confession she had made at your solicitation 
and instance, and at a time when you were also confessing to 
her, or anything of that description, and that you were angry 



WAS ELIZABETH INSANE f 343 

about it, and took Moulton to your house to have him see 
whether she would make such a statement or not, and that Mr. 
Moulton coming iii and repeating the statement in your pres- 
ence, you asked her whether she had ever said so, and she said 
she had not, and you turned to Moulton and said, "Then you 
are the one who is the liar?" A. I do not remember an such 
phrase as that; Frank Moulton said to me, as nearly as I can 
recollect (his memory is better than mine), that Elizabeth, in a 
mood of severity on me (which she did not very often assume) 
said that I had made to her confession about myself corres- 
ponding with the confession which she had made to me against 
herself, which was not true; and Frank asked her squarely if 
it was so. 

Q. Did he ask her or did you ? A. I do not remember. 

Q. What did she say? A. She said "No," and then Frank 
afterwards told me she said the opposite. 

Q. Now did you not know that the very next morning she 
wrote to Mr. Moulton a letter beginning, "Dear Francis, 1 told 
you two falsehoods," and proceeded to say in substance, " The 
fact is that when I am in the presence of Mr. Tilton he has 
such a control over me that I am not responsible for what I 
say," or "I am obliged to say whatever he wills that I should 
say; but the truth is that I had reported the story just as you 
had heard it." A. I do not ; I know that she had some con- 
versation with him, which she reported to me as being greatly 
like a see-saw — saying one thing and unsaying it. 

Q. Have you ever had doubts of her sanity? A. No. 

Q. Never ? A. No, sir. 

Q. Have you ever threatened to put her in an asylum? A. 
No, sir. 

Q. Have you ever circulated the story among her acquaint- 
ances or friends that she was becoming insane? A. No, but 
that her mother was ; there was one time about then when 
she was a little delirious. 

Q. When? A. I do not remember; her mind wandered a 
little in sickness; she has never had a taint of insanity; you 
know we have a customary ph rase, "You say an extravagant 
being, my friend, you are insane;" thaHs the only possible 
way in which Elizabeth has been insane; she is not" insane at 
all. 

Q. Mr. Tilton you have quoted the letters of your wife here 
to prove what the character of your home was in the begin- 
ning of 18G8 and through 18G8 ? A. I quoted them to show 
what it was previous to her surrender to him. 



344 BEEGHER TO PRESIDE AT STEINWA Y HALL. 

Q. You have stated, Mr. Tilton, that there were acts of 
criminality, first at Mr. Beecher's house, and secondly, at your 
own house ; do you pretend to have a personal knowledge of 
those acts ? A. Only the knowledge of Mrs. Tilton's confession 
— that is all ; I was absent at the time. 

Q. Mr. Moulton was in college with you? A. Yes, sir. 

Q. He has always been your friend from your college days? 
A. Yes, sir, and I hope he will be to the end of my life. 

Q. Your novel is dedicated to him ? A. Yes, but he has 
not done me the honor of reading it; I will never dedicate 
another. 

Q. You say that you had not reported this scandal to the 
Woodhull women or woman ; but you do not deny that you 
had frequently spoken harshly of Mr. Beecher to her ? A. 
Oh, not harshly ; I have spoken often critically of him, but al- 
ways with a view to have her do no harm to him; I expressed 
my opinion about him. 

Q. How came she and Mr. Beecher to have an interview? 
A. I do not remember the circumstances. I think Frank 
Moulton devised it ; Mr. Beecher had a number of interviews 
with her at Frank's house and one at mine. 

Q. Was not the object to get Mr. Beecher committed to her 
views of free love? A. No; to her views of the fourteenth 
and fifteenth amendments of woman's suffrage; Mr. Butler 
and I championed it, and we wanted Mr. Beecher to do the 
same. 

Q. Was it not to get him to preside at Stein way Hall ? A. 
That was not at my house, but at Frank's ; I think at mine it 
was in regard to the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. 

Q. Well, an effort was made to get him to preside there and 
introduce her at Steinway Hall, and an exposition of this scan- 
dal was threatened if he did not preside there ? A. Frank re- 
ceived a letter from Colonel Blood that he thought was a 
threat; it angered Frank a good deal. 

By Mr. Winslow — Did you see the letter from Colonel Blood, 
in which it was threatened that this scandal would be exposed 
if Mr. Beecher did not preside at the Steinway Hall meeting; 
A. I do not think that is so; if it was I did not know it; I do 
not think there was any truth in it. 

Q. Mr. Beecher had been importuned to preside, had he not ? 
A. Yes ; there came a note from Colonel Blood about the 
Woodhulls not being received in some hotel; they said it was 
because they were unpopular, and they wanted Mr. Beecher's 



PUTTING W00DI1ULL UNDER OBLIGATION. 345 

help ; there was something in the letter which Frank regarded 
as unhandsome, and I knew he was angry and expressed him- 
self strongly about it, and said it looked like blackmail ; it 
was one of the first indications of their attempting to use us. 

Q. Do you not know that Mr. Beecher was threatened that 
in case he did not preside at that meeting this scandal should 
be published? A. It is the first time that I have ever heard 
it suggested. 

Q. Was he not threatened by Mrs. Woodhull ? A. Not that 
I have any knowledge of. 

Q. Was not the very object of soliciting Mr. Beecher to pre- 
side at the Steimvay Hall meeting on the part of you and Mr. 
Moulton in order to place Mrs. Woodhull under obligation, so 
that she should not make the publication ? A. Precisely so ; 
we did not know that there was to be a publication ; we want- 
ed to keep her on our side, and wanted to take every possible 
occasion to do it ; her husband had spent a considerable length 
of time to devise this Steimvay Hall speech ; what is was 
about I do not know; she gave me and Frank the proofs, and 
he put them in his drawer ; I never looked at them ; it was 
our folly that we did not, for I might have known what was in 
that speech ; she wanted Mr. Beecher to preside ; I told Mr. 
Beecher that however unpopular she was he might go and pre- 
side, and I sketched a little sort of speech (and I think Frank 
sketched one) that, if he could see his way to do it, he might 
make: — "Fellow citizens — Here is a woman who is going to 
speak. She will probably speak on what you do not believe ; 
but that is no reason why she should not be heard. It is be- 
because I disagree with her that I would introduce her. I like 
free speech. I have the honor of presenting her. " I said to 
him that he was able to carry a little speech of that sort and I 
felt that if he Avent and presided it would put her under the 
same obligation to him as I fancied that Iliad put her under 
to me in writing her biography; I considered that I had se- 
cured her good will by writing that and other things, and I 
thought that if Mr. Beecher would do some signal service of 
that kind, which he could do and which would be noted as 
such, it would fix her under gratitude, and we would all be 
fixed ; Frank had done her some service ; Frank had been very 
friendly to her ; he had done her many services and he had 
great respect for her. 

Q. You pressed that argument on Mr. Beecher ? A. Yes, 
and Frank also. 
15* 



346 TUEOBOME PRESIDES. 

Q. As a matter of safety ? A. Yes ; I said " Think it over, 
and if you find that you can, go and do it." 

Q. Do you know whether the letter from Colonel Blood had 
been received at that time ? A. I do not know. 

Q. Mr. Beecher rejected your argument and refused to pre- 
side ? A. He did not refuse, but said that if he saw his way 
clear he would come and let us know. 

Q. But he did not let you know ? A. He did not let us 
know. 

Q. And you presided instead ? A. I did not want to ; but 
I had no idea of what the speech was going to be. 

Q. Although the proofs were in your hands and you might 
have known ? A. Yes ; but I never did know ; the proofs had 
been brought to Frank's study; I may have had the idea that 
they were for Mr. Beecher to see the speech ; but it was not 
the printed speech that did the damage, it was the interjected 
remarks in response to the audience; she said violent things. 

Q. Had you written her life at that time ? A. Yes, I had ; 
I am pretty certain of it. 

Q. What other things had you done to put her under obli- 
gations? A. I will tell you what I did; I wrote that idea of 
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, and spent three of 
the solidest weeks of my life in working it into an argument 
and printing it into a tract ; it was her idea, but she did not 
know how to expose it, and I worked it up in one of the most 
elaborate pieces of writing that I ever did ; that was one of the 
great services; the second was the writing of a sketch; then, 
also, when Senator Carpenter attacked that proposition I made 
an elaborate reply. 

Q. You went to the meeting yourself, and deliberately in- 
tended to go? A. No, I did not; Frank came to the Golden 
Age office; it rained and it was late, half-past seven o'clock, 
and I went to see who was to preside; there was no' expectation 
that I would preside at all; we got there at ten minutes to 
eight o'clock, and the crowd was so great that we could not 
get in at the front way, and we went into a large anteroom, 
and there was Mrs. Woodhuli, flushed and excited because 
there was not a brave man in the circle of the two cities to 
preside at her meeting ; Mr, Beecher did not come, and one or 
two others that had been invited were not there; she felt that 
there was no courage in men, and she was going on alone, and 
I said, " I will preside at your meeting ;" it was not more than 
ten minutes; I do not believe five minutes, forethought; I went 



IIE HAD NO SECRETS FROM ELIZABETH 347 

on the platform and made a few remarks and introduced her ; 
that was the way it came about. 

[Here followed an examination (foreign to the inquiry) as 
to Mr. Tilton's relations to certain women, which is too inde- 
cent to reproduce. 

Q. Did you ever express your attachment for — — in the 
presence of your wife? A. Ask my wile; take her answer; 

you may depend that I never said to , or any other lady, 

in the absence of my wife, what I would not have said in her 
presence; I have no secrets from Mrs. Tilton ; I never had any, 
and should never have had any, but for this break up ; I never 
had any secrets from Mrs. Tilton until within this last year or 
two, during which Ave have not harmonized as in former years. 

Q. Have you ever admitted to her that you had committed 
adultery? A. I never admitted to her anything of the kind. 

Q. But you don't mean to say that you have not, do you ? 
A. Mr. Tracy, talk to me as one gentlemen to another. 

General Tracy — You charge your wife with having commit- 
ted adultery; I mean to ask 3-011 whether you have or not ? A. 
I say, let my wife make the charge, if she wishes to. 

Q. I ask you the question. A. You may ask it till dooms- 
day. 

Q. You decline to answer ? A. I do not; I say I will take 
my wife's answer. 

Q. How could she know that you had, if you had not con- 
fessed it to her? I ask you whether you have not been guilty 
of the crime? A. I decline to hold a conversation with you on 
such a subject. 

Q. Have you not admitted to others your commission of 
adultery? A. Mr. Tracy, have you committed adultery? 

General Tracy — I have not charged my wife with that crime. 

Mr. Tilton — If I am to be charged with the crime of adul- 
tery in this business I Avish. to knoAv it. I Avish my wife, in 
Avhose interest you speak, to make the charge if she chooses. 
Xow let her choose. If you, gentlemen, suppose that you are to 
fight this battle in reference to my character I will make it ten 
times harder than you see. Yesterday Ave were on the edge of 
peace; but if you mean to draw tjie sword, the SAVord shall be 
drawn. 

Mr. Hill — Don't you think it is pretty well out? 

Mr. Tilton — There is one thing that 1 was born for and that 
is Avar. 



348 CHICAGO TIMES A SALACIOUS PAPER. 

Q. Did you make the acquaintance of Mrs. Woodhull in the 
absence of ? A. I don't remember whether she was ab- 
sent or present. 

Q. Don't you remember whether it was while she was at 
home or not that you were associating with Mrs. Woodhull ? 
A. I knew Mrs. Woodhull a whole year. 

Q. [After several questions interjected, involving reference 
\o another woman.] Do you know whether or not informa- 
tion was communicated to your wife that you were living with 
Mrs. Woodull ? A. I never lived with her. 

Q. Do you remember whether your wife was told that you 
were living with her? A. I never heard of it till now; 1 saw 
something the day before yesterday in a salacious newspaper. 

Q. The Chicago Times? A. Yes. 

Q. Have you read it ? A. Yes. 

Q. Don't you knoAv that information of precisely the char- 
acter then published was communicated to your wife by the 
mother of Mrs. Woodhull during your intimacy with Mrs. 
Woodhull ? A. I never heard of such a thing ; I remember 
that Mrs. Morse was with Mrs. Claflin; the old, crazy woman 
came at the foot of her stairs one night and made a hideous 
racket of some sort of trash; Mrs. Morse quoted that, and got 
quite frightened about it. 

General Tracy — I hope all the mothers of your friends are 
not insane. Don't you know that Mrs. Claflin at the same time 
communicated that to your wife? A. I did not know that she 
saw my wife; I understood that that woman made a visit at 
Mrs. Morse's ; it may be, .perhaps, that Mrs. Tilton's was there 
at the time. 

Q. Don't you know that your wife's mind has been disturbed 
in regard to your own infidelity to her by your associations 
with public women ? A. No, sir; if that pretence is made, 
Mr. Tracy, on your part, it is unmanly; if it is made on her 
part, it is false; 1 have never associated with public women. 

General Tracy — I don't mean prostitutes; I mean reformers. 
A. Oh, yes; I said before that Elizabeth had been annoyed, 
over and over again, by my associations with all persons out of 
the realm of religious orthodox ideas. 

Q. In that class of people whom among your lady acquaint- 
ances do you include ? A. I include Mrs. Stanton and Miss 
Anthony, though I have not seen those people. since .Elizabeth 
ordered them out of the house; beyond those persons I don't 
know; Lucy Stone was one; she lived in Boston; " /she did not 



ELIZABETH DISLIKES REFORMERS. 349 

come very often ; Elizabeth was a reformer at one time, and 
had the getting up of women's rights meetings, and had the 
children take the tickets; she arranged the campaign, but now 
she can't endure them. 

In explanation of the above, Mr. Tilton, in the journals of 
July 28th, published a card, asserting that the cross-examina- 
tion had been garbled, inasmuch as he had distinctly sworn 
that the several acts of criminality between Mr. Beecher and 
Mrs. Tilton were confessed by both of those parties to Mr. Til- 
ton, as well as to Mr. Frank Moulton, the " Mutual Friend." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A WEEK OF INTENSE EXCITEMENT. THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE RAVENS 

GATHER ABOUT. MRS. STANTON DECLARES THAT MR. TILTON 

ADMITTED TO HER THAT MR. BEECHER HAD SEDUCED MRS. TIL- 
TON, AND THAT MRS. TILTON CONFESSED THE SIN TO SUSAN B. 

ANTHONY. COL. ANTHONY ASSERTS THAT HIS SISTER TOLD HIM 

THE SAME STORY. MISS ANTHONY WILL NEITHER ADMIT NOR 

DENY THE ALLEGATIONS. STARTLING STATEMENTS BY MR. CAR- 
PENTER. THE CASE IN THE COURT AT LAST. DISAPPEARANCE 

OF MR. MOULTON. 

TpOLLOWING- close upon the publication of Mr. Tilton's 
-*- cross-examination some startling revelations were made 
that, while making the nrystery still deeper, were certainly 
damaging to Mr. Beecher's case. The following' letters which 
appeared in the Daily Graphic over the signature of "In- 
quirer " created much comment : 

" Please make room for the following points which ma}' serve 
to throw a light upon the great scandal now agitating this 
community. In reciting them, I know fully whereof I speak ; 

" 1. Tilton was not acquainted with Mrs. Woodhull until 
nearly a year after the difficulty in his family. His acquain- 
tance witli her was due to the fact that it came to his knowl- 
edge that she was in possession of his famil}' secret. His 
famous life of that woman was written in the endeavor to 
placate her and prevent the publication of the scandal. 

" 2. The story of the scandal got to the public through the 
indiscretion of Miss Susan B. Anthon}'. She was a guest of 
the Tiltons when the alleged discovery was made by Mr. Til- 
ton. Her story is that Mrs. Tilton came to her room one 

850 



FREE DIVORCE IN THE INDEPENDENT. 35 1 

night complaining of the violence of ' Theodore,' and the 
matter was talked over i'ully at the breakfast-table the next 
morning. 

" 3. The first person who communicated the alleged facts 
to Mrs. Woodhull was Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had 
received them in confidence from Miss Anthony, and of course 
they were told in the same way to all the family acquaintances 
of those two distinguished reformers. 

" 4. It is understood that Mrs. Woodhull has in her posses- 
sion a letter written by a brother of Miss Snsan B. Anthony, 
a resident of Kansas, in which the whole story of the scene 
witnessed by his sister at the house of the Tiltons is told. 

" 5. Tilton really tried to save his wife from this scandal. 
lie did not confess the fact even to his most intimate friends, 
and did all that a man could do to keep it secret until he was 
fairly driven to the wall. 

" 6. There is no doubt that at the time of this difficulty 
1 free-love ' doctrines had a great deal to do with the catastro- 
phe ; that they were held in a measure b} r all the parties to 
this unhappy scandal. The celebrated ' free divorce ' editorials 
in the Independent were written by Tilton subsequent to the 
discovery of the alleged scandal in his own family. 

" 7. There is no allegation on record of any infidelity on 
Tilton's part before the discovery of the supposed guilt of his 
wife. Whatever charges are against him date from a subse- 
quent period. 

" 8. This was not a case of deliberate seduction on the 
part of Mr. Bcecher, if the facts are as they are represented to 
me. She was angered at her husband for his self-sufficiency, 
his want of consideration for her, and what seemed to her 
jealous mind his probable infidelities. She went to Mr. Beecher 
for counsel, and in the prolonged interviews which ensued the 
intimacy occurred — if the facts are as Tilton supposes them to 
be. 

" In closing, I venture the prediction that it will be found at 
the bottom of this whole affair, that Mr. Beecher held a sexual 
theory which he believes to be in advance of the present con- 
stitution of societ3 r , and that if the facts are as alleged he has 
fallen because of following out a higher law, as he supposed, 
than that which controls the conventions of our present so- 
ciety." 

" Will you permit me to make a statement respecting this 
deplorable Tilton-Beecher business which may throw some 



352 TILTON FLATTERED BY WOMEN. 

light upon it? I should never have felt moved to utter a word 
on the subject, were it not that the facts have now become 
public property', and the incidents I am about to relate may 
help to form what is greatly needed, a coherent theory of this 
great scandal. The country is likely to be divided into earnest 
partisans of Tilton on the one hand, and Beecher on the other ; 
— but surety there must be a large number of people who have 
no special partiality for either of those gentlemen, and who 
wish simply to get at the truth of the affair. The information 
came into my possession three years ago — how, it is needless 
to relate. My only object in giving it is to explain the rela- 
tions of the parties to each other in a more judicial manner 
than would be the case if the ex-parte statements of either 
were taken as sole evidence. 

" When Mr. Tilton and his wife were first married, they 
lived together with a tolerable degree of happiness. But the 
conditions changed greatly within eight or ten years. The 
wife, who was an intelligent and clever woman, bore children 
very rapidly ; she has had seven, of whom four are now living. 
Immersed in maternal and household cares, Mrs. Tilton ceased 
to be attractive to her husband, over whom, in the meantime, a 
great change had come. From the obscurity of a reporter on 
the Tribune he had become the celebrated editor of the great- 
est religious newspaper in the country ; he was moreover an 
admirable orator, and seemed to have a great and most brilliant 
career before him. With these changed conditions came 
changed deportment towards his wife. He manifested a re- 
markable degree of self-importance ; he treated her, my in- 
formant says, with great want of consideration, and it is further 
hinted, that he was by no means faithful to his marriage vows. 
Led away by the flattery of women he failed to observe that 
moral code without which the marriage bond loses its sanctity. 
All this, of course, was extremely mortifying to the high- 
spirited wife and mother. She resented such treatment. And 
here let me remark that Mrs. Tilton is said to possess in an 
unusual degree, that craving for sympathy and tenderness 
which is the marked characteristic of her sex. It is even said 
that her exactions in this respect amount almost to selfish- 
ness. 

" Thus, with extreme sensitiveness on both sides, the ill- 
feeling which Mrs. Tilton could not suppress was met on Mr. 
Tilton's part with a want of conciliation, which only tended to 
make matters worse. In this frame of mind Mrs. Tilton 



IIOW THE EXPLOSION OCCURRED. 353 

naturally turned for advice and sjinpathy to her pastor, to the 
friend of her husband, to the minister who had married her, 
to the man to whom she had always looked up with reverence 
and affection. It seems that Tilton had, about this time, been 
absent a great deal from home. It was in the winter, and lie 
had seventy engagements for lectures, and consequently was 
traveling a great deal. Mrs. Tilton carried her bruised heart, 
her wounded pride, her unsatisfied longings to Mr. Beecher, 
and in him she found a warm sympathizer. Pit}*, as is well 
known, is near akin to love, and, it this theory is correct, it led 
the impulsive, warm-hearted preacher and the sympathetic, 
craving woman into an intimacy which it is alleged, became 
criminal. This was kept up for some time with the results 
that are known to the world. 

" According to my information the explosion occurred in 
this wise : Miss Susan B. Anthony (through whom, it is 
alleged, the story subsequently became public, she relating it 
to all her female associates) was stopping at Mr. Tilton's 
house. Tilton had been unusually exasperating in his de- 
meanor toward his wife, and it is said had given her renewed 
cause for jealous}'. She was provoked beyond endurance, and, 
filled with a desire to humiliate him, in passionate utterances 
she told him, in the presence of the guest alluded to, that she 
had been as faithless to her marriage vows as he had been to 
his. 

" A tremendous scene followed. Tilton was furious. Finally 
the whole story of her intimacy with her pastor came out. The 
circumstances, as I have depicted them, explain how the story 
got abroad. The secret, which should have been guarded by 
Theodore Tilton, Henry Ward Beecher, Mrs. Tilton, and their 
mutual friend, Frank Moulton, was first of all babbled about 
in the clique of woman suffragists, and finally found its way to 
the public. 

u In justice to Mr. Tilton, however, it must be stated that up 
to the date of his last letter he invariably defended his wife. 
He had denied to everybody but Frank Moulton and Oliver 
Johnson that anything more occurred than an improper over- 
ture from Mr. Beecher to Mrs. Tilton. 

" The way in which the public regard Tilton is very curious. 
Everybody admitted that he was a young man of great prom- 
ise, a fine orator, an able journalist. But somehow he was 
always the subject of unfavorable comment on the part of the 
press. He never did anybody any harm ; he never spoke uu- 



354 FREE LOVE AT THE BOTTOM. 

kindiy of any of his contemporaries ; he engaged in no cabals. 
But somehow he impressed the public and, I am told, the 
editors as a man who possessed a great deal of self-conscious- 
ness and as assuming a position he was not entitled to. At 
am' rate, he failed to make that favorable impression on his 
contemporaries which his talents certainly seemed to entitle 
him to. He possibly lacked a sense of humor, and often a 
want of tact in dealing with the outside public. But the fact 
remains that while he has a strong case as against Mr. Beecher, 
the press of this city is almost unanimously against him. 

" So here you have the story — the growing alienation be- 
tween husband and wife, both of them strongly self-conscious, 
both craving sj^mpattrv, both failing to have due consideration 
for each other. Then comes the pastor, warm-blooded, ex- 
uberant, impulsive, and moreover, it is said, with an unhappy 
home of his own. Such a man dealing with such a woman — 
all parties being meanwhile infected more or less with the 
current sexual theories as to the right of individuals to bestow 
their affections on whom the}- please — such a man and such a 
woman, in such a frame of mind, are not at all unlikely to fall. 
How large a share the free-love doctrines had in this painful 
affair nobody will probably ever know ; but that Henry Ward 
Beecher was deeply infected with these doctrines is no secret 
at all. Indeed, they were very plainty avowed by several 
members of his church to the writer as a positive defence of 
Mr. Beecher's slips when first this matter got into the papers ; 
and I feel convinced that these pernicious doctrines have had 
much to do with this unhapp} r scandal. 

" I give the statement with the accompan} T ing hypothesis, as 
it may probably afford a solution of this very painful affair. 
That Mr. Beecher is the treacherous seducer which Mr. Tilton 
tries to prove him, very few people will believe. Mr. Beecher 
fell, if this stor}- is true, through his sympathy with a woman 
in distress, whom he believed was alienated from her husband 
by the cruelty of the latter. All this is explicable, and the 
case affords another warning as to the misery which invariably 
results from the satisfaction of purely egotistic impulses." 

Upon the appearance of these letters a reporter of the Brook- 
lyn Argus visited Mrs. Stanton, who in answer to questions 
told the following story : — 

" Some time — I think it was in the Fall of the year, though 



AN UNPLEASANT SCENE. 355 

I won't be positive — while Mrs. Ballard was still connected 
with the Revolution, Susan 15. Anthony, Mr. and Mrs. Tilton, 
Mrs. Bullard, and myself, were in Brooklyn together. It was 
afternoon, and after calling at the office of the Revolution, Mr. 
Tilton and myself accompanied Mrs Bullard to her residence, 
and remained to dinner. 

Through some misunderstanding, Miss Anthony went with 
Mrs. Tilton, and dined witli her instead of us. There was 
some feeling on the part of Mrs. Tilton in regard to this, 
although it was quite unintentional on my part. Well, at the 
table — no one was present but Mrs. Bullard, Mr. Tilton, and 
myself — Theodore told the whole story of his wife's faithless- 
ness. As I before observed, he did not go into the details ; 
but the sum and substance of the whole matter he related in 
the hearing of Mrs. Bullard and nryself. We were reformers. 
He gave us the story as a phase of social life." 

" ' This was the first you had heard of it?" 

" ' This was the first. The next evening, hearing that Miss 
Anthony was a little piqued at me for leaving her on the day 
before, I returned to my home in Tenafly. To my surprise, I 
found Susan awaiting my arrival. That evening, when we 
were alone, I said to her : ' Theodore related a very strange 
story to Mrs. Bullard and me, last evening.' Then I recounted 
to her all that he had told us. Miss Anthony listened atten- 
tively to the end. Then she said : 

"' I have heard the same story from Mrs. Tilton. We com- 
pared notes, and found that by both man and wife the same 
story had indeed been told/ 

" ' What were the particulars of Mrs. Tilton's confession ?' 

" ' I will tell }*ou how it was made. When Mr. Tilton 
returned home that evening, some angry words — growing out 
of the separation in the afternoon — passed between him and 
his wife. Both became intensely excited. In the heat of the 
passion, and in the presence of Mrs. Anthon} r , each confessed 
to the other of having broken the marriage-vow. In the midst 
of these startling diselosures, Miss Anthony withdrew to her 
room. Shortly after she heard Mrs. Tilton come dashing up 
the stairs, and Mr. Tilton following close after. She flung 
open her bedroom door, and Elizabeth rushed in. The door 
was then closed and bolted. Theodore pounded on the outside, 
and demanded admittance, but Miss Anthony refused to turn 
the key. So intense was his passion at that moment that she 
feared he might kill his wife if he gained access to the room. 



356 SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 

Several times he returned to the door, and angrily demanded 
that it be opened. " No woman shall stand between me and 
my wife," he said. But Susan, who is as courageous as she is 
noble, answered him with the words, " If you enter this room it 
will be over my dead body !" And so the infuriated man 
ceased his demands and withdrew. Mrs. Tilton remained with 
Susan throughout the night. In the excitement of the hour, 
amid sobs and tears, she told all to Miss Anthoiry. The 
whole stoiy of her own faithlessness, of Mr. Beecher's course, 
of her deception, and of her anguish, fell upon the ears of Susan 
B. Anthony, and were spoken by the lips of Mrs. Tilton. The 
next morning, Mr. Tilton told Susan never to enter his house 
again. She told him she should enter whenever she chose ; 
but I believe she did not go there again." 

"B}^ Mr. Tilton's cross-examination," observed the reporter, 
' it appears that Mrs. Tilton was far from friendly to Miss 
Anthony. How could she have made this confession to her?' 

" On the contrary, Mrs. Tilton thought a great deal of Miss 
Anthoiry, of Mrs. Billiard, and all those ladies. I was very 
intimate with her before Mrs. Woodhull's thunderbolt. At the 
time of our first knowledge of the affair, Mr. Wilkeson also 
heard of it. He besought the ladies not to make it public. ,To 
him it was a matter of money. He was a stockholder in Ply- 
mouth Church, in the Christian Union, and in " The Life of 
Christ." Now, the destruction of Mr. Beecher would be the 
destruction of all these. As Mr. Wilkeson expressed it, "It 
would knock the 4 Life of Christ ' higher than a kite." Hence his 
concern in keeping the matter secret. 

This startling statement was followed by the following con- 
firmation of Mrs. Stanton from Susan B. Anthony's brother. 
It is from a special dispatch to the Chicago Tribune from 
Leavenworth, Kansas : 

" Col. Anthony, Susan B.'s brother, told your correspondent 
to-day that he first heard the scandal story from the lips of his 
sister, in Washington, one year ago. Susan B. Anthony told 
him that she w T as a guest at Tilton's house when a violent do- 
mestic scene occurred. She retreated to her room to avoid it, 
and was presently followed by Mrs. Tilton. The two women 
bolted the door, placing the bedstead against it, to keep Tilton 
on the outside. Tilton accused his wife of adultery with 
Beecher, and she replied with the accusation that he had pro- 



WILL ONL Y SPEAK IN A CO URT. 357 

cured an abortion for a } T oung lady of Brooklyn, whom lie had 
seduced, calling the lady by name. That night Miss Anthony 
and Mrs. Tilton slept together, and during a conversation the 
latter, in seeming mental distress, imparted the secret of a 
guilty intrigue with Beechcr. Miss Anthony asked her how 
she came to yield to Beecher's advances ; if he used force ; to 
which Mrs. Tilton replied no force was used, she yielding with- 
out knowing why she did so. She averred that Beecher treated 
her with the kindness he would a child. She resolved many 
times to yield no more, but as often her good resolutions failed. 
This is the whole substance of Susan B. Anthony's story, as 
related to her brother, lie is of the opinion that his sister will 
not testify in the case unless compelled to do so in court." 

Several interviews followed with Miss Anthony, but she 
would neither contradict nor affirm the statements of Col. An- 
thoivy and Mrs. Stanton, alleging that she obtained the knowl- 
edge confidentially, and would only speak in a court of law. 
Mrs. Stanton was interviewed the second time and more fully 
explained matters in this fashion : 

Reporter — You have no doubt in your mind but that Mrs. 
Tilton made a confession to Susan B. Anthony? 

Mrs. Stanton — Not the slightest ; not any more than though 
I hnd heard it myself. Susan always speaks the truth. 

Reporter — And that confession was of a criminal intimacy 
with Henry Ward Beecher? 

Mrs. Stanton — Yes ; criminal as the word is generally un- 
derstood. Mrs. Tilton did not look upon it in that way. 

Reporter — But it was a confession of what Mr. Tilton has 
sinced charged. 

Mrs. Stanton — Precisety. 

Reporter — You know, beyond all doubt, that Theodore Til- 
ton told to you and to Mrs. Bullard the stoiy of his wife's in- 
fidelity? 

Mrs. Stanton — Certainly. The main facts of the case he 
told us at the time I have specified. Ma 113* incidents related in 
the Woodhull statement I have never heard of ; but the story 
itself I heard from his lips. 

Reporter — After Mr. Tilton had told you this stoiy did he 
ever deny it? 

Mrs. Stanton — Yes. When the Woodhull thunderbolt had 
fallen, Mr. Wilkeson called upon Mr. Tilton and the latter flatly 



358 MBS. STANTON TALES. 

denied having made any such statement regarding his wife. 
As soon as I was informed of this I said to Miss Anthony, " I 
have proof of my story, and I want you to go straight to Mrs. 
Ballard's with me." We went there ; and in an interview, last- 
ing over an hour, I recalled to Mrs. Bullard Mr. Tilton's con- 
versation to us on the Beecher matter, and she fully confirmed 
my statement to Miss Anthony, indignant at the message Mr. 
Wllkeson had communicated from Mr. Tilton, stated to Mrs. 
Ballard her interview with Elizabeth on that memorable night. 

Reporter — To whom does this account, in the Chicago paper 
interview, refer? 

Mrs. Stanton — To Mrs. Fernando Jones. 

Reporter — What do 3-ou think of the statement credited to 
her?. 

Mrs. Stanton — Perhaps I ought to extend the same charity 
towards Mrs. Jones that she has towards me — I believe that 
the interviewer reported her words incorrectly. At the same 
time I readily understand how, not knowing that I had decided 
to make anything public, Mrs. Jones might have told her story 
out of simple friendship for me. That is, in order to hide the 
truth. 

Reporter — Have you any idea what testimony Frank Moul- 
ton could render if he wished. 

Mrs. Stanton — Nothing more than that he has been in the 
confidence of Mr. Beecher for many }*ears. After a visit which 
the latter once made to Mr. Moulton, Frank said : " We have 
had Plymouth church on its knees here." Of course, his testi- 
mony ought to be had. 

Reporter — Are you willing to appear before the committee, 
Mrs. Stanton? 

Mrs. Stanton — No, not before that committee. When gen- 
tlemen who are in the confidence of its proceedings tell me that 
the integrity of every witness who appears against Mr. Beech- 
er is to be impeached, I have no wish to give 1113^ testimony. I 
belong to a family of lawyers, and I have great respect for the 
law. When the case comes before a civil court I shall willingly 
appear if summoned. There is no stronger proof* that the 
committee have a difficult case in sustaining Mr. Beecher than 
its understood determination to impeach the integrity of every 
witness against him, and no better proof of the strength of 
Mr. Tilton's position than its subterfuges in trying to under- 
mine him by attacking the characters of all the ladies of his 
acquaintance. Can Mr. Beecher, in his circle, boast nobler, 



MRS. JONES COULD TELL. 350 

truer, purer women than those identified with the various re- 
form movements in this country? Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Tilton 
need be ashamed of such acquaintances as Grace Greenwood, 
Celia Burleigh, Anna Dickinson, Lucy Stone, Susan B. An- 
thon}' or Paulina Davis, who have all been honored visitors at 
his house. It is beneath the dignity of any man or committee 
of men to attempt to shadow lives like these. 

Reporter — Do you think Miss Anthony would be willing to 
testify before the committee? 

Mrs. Stanton — I think not; but before the civil courts she 
undoubtedly would. 

Reporter — Airs. Stanton, do you believe in the doctrine of 
free love, as advocated by Mrs. AVoodhull? 

Mrs. Stanton — No ; I believe in law. I have alwaj'S been in 
favor of doing everything in harmony with law. In my ad- 
dress on " Marriage and Divorce," which was made in substance 
before the Legislature of New York, I gave my views on the 
whole social question. The speech is published. Any one can 
refer to it. 

Reporter — The Chicago Mail and Post attributes to Mrs. 
Jones these words : — " JVi iss Anthony would not have revealed 
a confession of criminality made by Mrs. Tilton to any one — 
not even Mrs. Stanton." AVhat have you to say on that? 

Mrs. Stanton — Mrs Jones did not tell to the Mail and Post 
all that she might have told. Miss Anthony and I have been 
intimate friends for more than thirty years. "When we met the 
evening after the confessions, both fresh with astonishment, it 
was perfectly natural that we should mutuall}' confide. And 
we did so. 

Reporter — Have 3-011 heard from Miss Anthony since the pub- 
lication of your statement? 

Mrs. Stanton — I have. She has been on a lecturing tourj 
and has been \Q.ry unwilling to say anything about the matter. 
She considered it would be a breach of confidence. 

Reporter — Did you read Mr. Carpenter's statement, published 
in the Argus? 

Mrs. Stanton — I did, and in its confirmation I have to say 
that during my recent visit to Paulina Davis at Providence she 
told me that she had heard this story from Oliver Johnson's 
family long before I knew anything of it. 

Reporter — What do you think of Mr. Tilton's arrest. 

Mrs. Stanton — I was in hopes that it would bring the case 
into the courts, but I suppose some other means will have to be 
taken to accomplish that end. 



360 E. B. IIOLTON WAS PRESENT. 

At the conclusion of the interview, which had been pleasant- 
ly seasoned with a lunch and spiced with racy remarks on a va- 
riety of topics, Mrs. Stanton observed, " I don't like to be rep- 
resented by the press as striking a blow at a woman ; but 
when it comes to the women of the suffrage movement and Mr. 
Beecher, I prefer to let him kick the beam, though he may take 
some one woman with him." 

- Mr. Frank B. Carpenter, who figured as a friend of Mr. Til- 
ton in all the negotiations with Eev. Dr. Bacon was interviewed 
by an Argus reporter on July 26th and thus described his con- 
nection with the case : — 

" I was first brought actively into this case by Mr. Beecher. 
On Sunday, May 25th 1873, Mr. Beecher sent Mr. H. M. 
Cleaveland, his confidential friend and business partner, to my 
residence, in Forty-fifth street, with a horse and carriage. Mr. 
Cleaveland told me that Mr. Beecher wished me to come imme- 
diately to Brooklyn. On our wa\ T to Brooklyn, Mr. Cleaveland 
said that Mr. Beecher had learned that Mr. Bo wen had reas- 
serted to me the charges against him (Beecher) which he had 
formerly made to Mr. Tilton, but which he had retracted in a 
written covenant, in the possession of Mr. H. B. Claflin. Mr. 
Beecher had learned that Mr. Bowen had said to nryself, and 
also in the presence of Mr. E. D. Holton, a citizen of Milwau- 
kie (in an interview at the Independent office), that he did not 
wish us to understand that he had made a retraction. Mr. 
Cleaveland said Mr. Beecher wished me to confront Mr. Bowen 
on these points. He also said that the tripartite covenant 
was to be made public. Mr. Cleaveland drove me to Mr. 
Moulton's house, in Remsen street. Mr. Beecher was not there, 
but Mr. Moulton said it was Mr Beecher's wish that I should 
goto Mr. Bowen's house that evening, in compaii3 r with Mr. 
Claflin and himself (Mr. M.), and repeat to them the substance 
of what Mr. Bowen had said to me. A few minutes later, Mr. 
Tilton came to Mr. Moulton's house ; I told him about making 
the covenant public. Mr. Tilton said that if Mr. Beecher's 
friends made that covenant public, it would be a very danger- 
ous thing. He protested against the publicit}'. 

About eight o'clock Suncla}- evening, Mr. Moulton and my- 
self went to Mr. Claflin's house, in Pierrepont street, where we 
found Mr, Claflin, and then all proceeded to Mr. Bowen's resi- 
dence, corner of Clark and Willow streets. There I recounted 



CLAFLIN EXPRESSES ASTONISHMENT, 361 

to Mr. Bowen, in the presence of Messrs. Claflin and Moulton, 
the statements made by Mr. Bowen to myself concerning Mr. 
Beeclier. Mr. Bowen admitted all that I said, and Mr Claflin 
expressed his astonishment that Mr. Bowen should have 'told 
those things after signing the covenant Mr. Claflin was the 
man who induced Bowen to sigh that covenant. Mr. Bowen 
said he protested against giving publicity to the covenant. I 
said to Mr. Bowen: "The simplest justice to Mr. Beecher 
requires that, if your statements concerning Mr. Beecher are 
not true, you should make the most unqualified public denial. 
But if they are true, stand by your statements." Mr. Bowen 
had said to me that Mr. Beecher had made a confession on his 
knees to him. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Moulton had been told b} r 
Beecher that this was a lie. I said : " Mr. Bowen, there is a 
direct lie between you and Mr. Beecher, and for one, I want to 
know the truth." 

Mr. Claflin said : " I think we had better have Mr. Beecher 
here, to-night." 

I said 1 would be glad to have Mr. Beecher present. 

Mr. Bowen said : " I am willing to have Mr. Beecher come 
here, and will confront him." 

Mr. Claflin volunteered to go and get him, when Mr. Moul- 
ton started up and said : 

" Mr. Claflin, I will go." 

He went out, and was gone fifteen or twenty minutes. He 
returned without Mr. Beecher, saying that the house was closed 
and the windows darkened ; that he rang the bell, but couldn't 
raise anybody. This was about 10 : 30 o'clock. Mr. Claflin 
then said : 

" Well, I think it's very important that Mr. Bowen and Mr. 
Beeclier should have a private interview before this matter goes 
any further." 

Mr. Bowen pledged that he would be read}' and willing to 
see Mr. Beecher the next clay (Monday), any time between 
eight o'clock in the morning and ten o'clock at night. 

Mr. Claflin said he would see Mr. Beecher the next morning 
and arrange such an interview, and, a few minutes later, we 
left Mr. Bo wen's residence. 

A few days after this I saw Mr. Claflin, who told me that he 
had seen Mr. Beecher the next day, and that Mr. Beecher 
said : 

There isn't force enough in Brooklyn to draw me into a })ri- 
vate interview with Henri/ C. Bowen.'" 
16 



362 BOWEN MADE A MISTAKE. 

At this time I had never seen the tripartite covenant, but 
Mr. Clafiin had told me the paper was in his hands. 

In my business relations with Mr. Bowen, we had frequent 
conversations in regard to his difficulty with Mr. Beecher. On 
one occasion, Mr. Bowen told me that they first wanted him to 
sign a much more sweeping document, declaring his charges 
against Mr. Beecher to be untrue. This, he said he had refused 
to do. Mr. Clafiin then urged him to at least sign a paper 
withdrawing the charges, and he consented to do that. In 
regard to the second paper, Mr. Bowen subsequently said : " I 
made a mistake in signing that, but Mr. Clafiin induced me to 
do it." 

On the following Friday (May 30th, 1873), the tripartite 
covenant was made public in the New York morning papers. 
The following Siinda}^ night I w r ent to Plymouth Church, and 
after the services I w r ent up to have some conversation with 
Mr. Beecher in regard to his sending Mr. Cleaveland for me 
the previous Sunday. 

" Mr. Carpenter," says the interviewer, " here repeated to 
the writer the substance of the conversation which took place 
between Mr. Beecher and himself that evening. We can only 
say that the statements which Mr. Carpenter says Mr. Beecher 
made that evening are, if true, of the utmost significance and 
importance. Mr. Carpenter declares that he will not make 
public this conversation, unless he is called upon to testify 
before the proper tribunal. It was during this interview that 
Mr. Beecher told Mr. Carpenter that in case Theodore would 
make certain disavowals, he would share his fame and fortune 
with him, and pour in subscribers to the Golden Age by the 
thousands. The interview which- Mr. Carpenter speaks of 
occurred on the evening of the same day, when Mr. Beecher 
wrote his touching letter, dated Sunday, June 1st, 1873. 
Great significance attaches to Mr. Carpenter's statement, from 
the fact that Mr. Beecher's card, exonerating Mr. Tilton from 
being his slanderer and defamer, was published the next day, 
June 2nd, 1873. 

Reporter — How long have you been acquainted with Mr. 
Tilton? 

Mr. Carpenter — Twenty years. 

Reporter — Have 3-011 been intimate with him? 

Mr. Carpenter — I have. 

Reporter — Has he ever evinced, either by word or manner, 
vindictiveness or malice against Henry Ward Beecher? 



CARPENTERS STATEMENT. 3G3 

Mr. Carpenter — No. I never knew a man to bear so much. 
One of the editors of the Eagle told me that Theodore Tilton 
had suffered more than any man since Jesus Christ. Tilton 
told me the night he put the Bacon letter to press that he 
would rather take thirty-nine lashes in the flesh, and draw blood 
every time, than have printed this thing against Mr. Beecher. 
Tilton further said : " Mr. Beecher has laid open his breast, 
and told me to smite. His pleading face is before me now. 
But Dr. Bacon has put me in the attitude of a knave and a dog, 
and I must place myself right before the world." He also 
said : " This is no impersonal newspaper attack. Dr. Bacon 
was my senior on the Independent He is a good and wise 
man, and if his statement goes forth uncontradicted, I am dis- 
graced before Christendom." The morning that Dr. Bacon's 
speech was published, Mr. Beecher, Mr. Tilton, Mr. Moulton, 
and Mr. Thomas G. Shearman were together in Mr. Moulton's 
study. Mr. Tilton took out of his pocket a New York paper 
containing a report of Dr. Bacon's speech. That part of the 
speech referring to Beecher's magnanimity and to Tilton's 
being a knave and a dog, Mr. Tilton read to Mr. Beecher. He 
then said : u Mr. Beecher, }'ou know that I have treated you 
with the utmost fairness, and that the statements of Dr. Bacon 
are untrue. I call upon you, as a simple act of justice, to make 
a correction of Dr. Bacon's charges. You have a newspaper of 
your own ; you can do it without compromising }*ourself, and 
without damage to }'onrself. If }-ou do not correct the impres- 
sion which Dr. Bacon has given the public, I shall be compelled 
to do it myself ; and if I do it, Mr. Beecher, it will be done 
with serious damage to you." Mr. Beecher made no reply. 

Reporter — Have you regarded Theodore Tilton as a tale- 
bearer ? 

Mr. Carpenter — Theodore Tilton has striven to shield these 
parties. Dr. Storrs has frequently commented on his utter 
absence of vindictiveness, and the sorrow-stricken air and atti- 
tude with which Mr. Tilton came to him" to ask his advice. 

Reporter — What was the character of Mr. Tilton's home ? 

Mr. Carpenter — It was one of the most delightful homes I 
ever knew. 

Reporter — Are you prepared to say, from your own knowl- 
edge, that Mr. Tilton was disinclined to publish the letter to 
Dr. Bacon? 

Mr. Carpenter — I am, and do so say. After Dr. Bacon 
made that speech to the Divinity Class, Mr. Tilton wrote him 



364 INTERVIEW WITH DR. BACON. 

a private letter, to correct the false impressions Dr. Bacon had 
formed up to three months after Mr. Tilton called Mr Beecher's 
attention to Dr. Bacon's open attack on him. Mr. Beecher 
had made no sign, had shown no intention, of replying. Then 
Tilton wrote the Bacon letter, as the least he could do in justice 
to his own good name, to his children, and to his friends. His 
intimate friends demanded that he should do it. They told 
Mr. Tilton that if he allowed such charges as Dr. Bacon had 
made, concerning him, to pass unrefuted, he would forfeit the 
respect of everybody. Mr. Tilton asked me if I would take 
his letter to Dr. Bacon. I said I would. At my request he 
accompanied me to New Haven, as I thought Dr. Bacon, upon 
reading that letter, would wish to ask questions which I couldn't 
answer. Mr. Tilton finally consented to go with me. Dr. 
Bacon received us with courtesy and kindness. Mr. Tilton 
said : " Dr. Bacon, I have come to you with my Statement. 
You have represented me before the world as a bad man. You 
have not had the facts in this case on which to form a correct 
judgment. I have come here, believing you to be a wise and 
good man — incapable of doing any man willful injustice. I do 
not want to make this case public, and I have come here with 
my friend, Mr. Carpenter, who bears this letter, in the hope 
that your wisdom may devise a course by which my good name 
may be saved, without giving publicity to the facts in this 
case." He then read the letter to Mr. Bacon, with scarcely an 
interruption. When he finished, Dr. Bacon said : " I have 
been thinking, Mr. Tilton, as you have been reading, whether 
this is a private communication?" 

Mr. Tilton said : " All I want is justice. I hope you will 
suggest some wa}^ by which justice may be done without giv- 
ing the case to the world." 

A reference was then made to Mr. Bowen's part of the tri- 
partite covenant, and Dr. Bacon said : 

" I have observed that Mr. Bowen, in withdrawing his charges, 
does not say they are not true. He simply withdrew them." 

Mr. Tilton spoke charitably and feelingly to Dr. Bacon with 
regard to Mr. iieecher, and did not show malice or vinclictive- 
ness. I call upon Dr. Bacon to testify to the truth of m} r state- 
ment. As we rose to take our leave, Dr. Bacon said he could 
not give advice on so important a matter without reflection. 
We bade him good-bye, and returned to New York the same 
evening. This was Friday, the 19th of last month. 

The next evening, Mr. Tilton asked me to write a note to Dr. 



HIS LETTER TO THE DOCTOR. 305 

Bacon, asking him if he could recommend an}- course by which 
publication could be avoided. In compliance with his request, 
I wrote this note : 

New York, June 20th, 1874. 
Rev. Dr. Bacon: 

My Dear Sir — I was at Mr. Tilton's office to-day, and had a 
conversation with him concerning our recent interview at your 
study. The impression which you left on his mind was that of 
great fairness and candor towards his case and himself. This 
he expressed to me in still stronger terms than at first. He 
told me, furthermore, that, relying on your sense of justice, he 
would willingly forego the publication of his defence, if, in 
your judgment, the vindication of his course towards Plymouth 
Church could be accomplished in some other way than in 
making painful references to the pastor. 

Mr. Tilton's respect for your opinion as to the wisest course 
for him to pursue is so strong that I am sure he will either 
publish or suppress his letter, according as you shall advise. 
He said, to-day, with great seriousness : " If I could see Dr. 
Bacon again, I would ask him this question : ' Is there any 
reason, either of morals or of expediency, which should forbid 
me to publish this letter?' In other words, is the injury which 
this publication will inflict on Mr. Beecher too great to warrant 
my resort to so extreme a measure in self-defence ? 

Mr. Tilton feels that the publication of his letter will strike 
a blow at Mr. Beecher from which he never can recover, and 
for this reason Mr. Tilton hopes you may be able to relieve 
him from his distressing public position without entailing dis- 
tress upon Mr. Beecher. Mr. Tilton's continued silence, as you 
know, has been greatly misinterpreted by the public. The few 
who have stood faithfully through the storm of detraction, are 
now urgent that he should speak. 

Any communication from you to nryself will be considered 
confidential in its character, should 3-011 so desire. 
I am, trul} 7 3-ours, 

F. B. Carpenter. 

"This letter," said Mr. Carpenter, " I did not send, as I 
learned through Mr. C. C. Woolworth, of Brooklyn, that an 
esteemed mutual friend was going immediately to New Haven. 
I called on this friend (a Brooklyn gentleman esteemed for his 
piety and learning, whose name Mr. Carpenter desires to have 
suppressed for the present), and laid before him the points of 



366 OTHER LADIES INVOL VED. 

my letter, asking him to have an interview with Dr. Bacon, and 
endeavor to arrange some settlement by which publicity could 
be avoided. 

" No word came, and after waiting until Wedneschiy after- 
noon, the letter was printed. My friend saw Dr. Bacon, as he 
had promised, and, in the course of the interview, Dr. Bacon 
said : 4 If Mr. Tilton publishes that letter, and Plymouth 
Church does not reply to it within twenty -four hours by a suit 
at law against Mr. Tilton, they will have no case before the 
Christian public.'" 

Mr. Carpenter continued : — 

" In the original letter, as read to Dr. Bacon, the charge 
against Mr. Beecher was in these words : — ' Knowledge came 
to me, in 1870, that he (Mr. Beecher) had committed against 
me and my family a revolting crime.' After the letter was in 
type and the proof was being corrected, one of Mr. Beecher's 
intimate friends implored Tilton to change this language, and 
make the charge in the words : ' An oifence which I forbear to 
name or characterize.' This gentleman said to Mr. Tilton, in 
my presence : ' If } r ou will so change this language, Mr. 
Beecher will make a public acknowledgment of an offence.' 
Mr. Tilton at first refused to so modify the expression, but was 
overruled by the pleadings of Mr. Beecher's friends. I con- 
sider this another proof that Theodore Tilton has acted without 
malice in this matter." 

Reporter— Did not Mr. Tilton think that Mr. Beecher's 
apology bound him to silence ? 

Mr. Carpenter — He never revealed that apology either to Dr. 
Storrs or myself until after Mr. Beecher wrote the letter of de- 
fiance calling for an investigating committee. 

Reporter — In what terms was Mrs. Tilton referred to by her 
husband ? 

Mr. Carpenter — Always in the language of affection, and 
often with pride. 

Reporter — Has Mr. Cleveland ever intimated to } r ou that, in 
case of disclosure, other ladies woidd be involved? 

Mr. Carpenter — He has repeatedly. 

Reporter — Did he mention names? 

Mr. Carpenter — He did. 

Reporter — Will you state them? 

Mr. Carpenter — I will not. 

Reporter — Will }'ou state them if called upon to give them 
before a court ? 



JOHNSON KNO WS ABO UT IT. 367 

Mr. Carpenter — I might then be compelled to. I will not 
do it voluntarily. 

Reporter — Did you ever have an} r conversation with Oliver 
Johnson in reference to this case? 

Mr. Carpenter — Why do you ask this question? 

Reporter — Mr. Johnson stated before the committee that Mr. 
Tilton had never, in conversation with him, accused Mr. 
Beecher of criminality. Did Mr. Johnson ever intimate to you 
that Mr. Tilton had charged criminality? 

Mr. Carpenter — He has. Mr. Johnson and myself, as the 
friends of Mr. Theodore Tilton, have frequently talked over 
this matter. I had reason to consider Mr. Johnson Mr. Til- 
ton's most intimate friend next to Mr. Moulton. Mr. Johnson 
and myself often conversed about Mr. Tilton with mutual 
interest and sympatlry for him. Mr. Johnson gave me my first 
absolute conviction that there was something criminally wrong 
between Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton. Mr. Johnson distinctly 
told me that Mr. Tilton had charged adultery between Mr. 
Beecher and Mrs. Tilton. This statement was made to me in 
July, 1873, at the foot of the stairs leading to the office of the 
Christian Un ion . 

I can prove that Oliver Johnson used these words ; " My 
lips are sealed by a solemn promise ; but if I should disclose 
what I know, the roof of Plymouth Church would come right 
off." Another time, Mr. Johnson said to me, " I know a great 
deal more about this case than you do, and what } t ou know is 
bad enough." 

Reporter — Have you read Mrs. Tilton's statement? 

Mr. Carpenter — 1 have. 

Reporter — Has Mrs. Tilton ever made an}' admissions to you 
compromising Mr. Beecher? 

Mr. Carpenter — Mrs. Tilton, in my presence, was asked b} r 
Mr. Tilton to put in writing something in reference to her re- 
lation with Mr. Beecher, that he could show to Dr. Storrs. 
This was in December, 1872, or Januaiy, 1873, Mrs. Tilton 
assented willingly, and, going to her room, returned in a few 
moments with a manuscript, on which was written, as near as 
I can remember, these words : 

" On a certain occasion, Mr. Beecher solicited me to become 
a wife to him, with all that is implied in this relation. This 
proposition I communicated to my husband," Mr. Tilton took 
that writing to Rev. Dr. Storrs. 

Reporter — How do know this ? 



368 -M- STOBIZS CALLED UPON. 

Mr. Carpenter — I accompanied Mr. Tilton, and saw Theo- 
dore place this document in Dr. Storrs' hand. 

Eeporter — Why was Dr. Storrs called into this case ? 

Mr. Carpenter— Mr. Tilton knew Dr. Storrs as an intimate 
friend of Mr. Beecher's, and he went to him for counsel soon 
after the Woodhull letter appeared. He said: "Dr. Storrs I 
come to you for advice in regard to the proper action to be 
taken bv myself in reference to the statements made in the 
Woodhull letter^ 

Dr. Storrs replied: "I have not read tlie statement made by 
Mrs. Woodhull, but if you think it is of sufficient importance 
to merit attention, I will do so. 

Dr. Storrs read the remarkable Woodhull story, and a few 
days later, when Mr. Tilton visited him, said : 

"Mr. Tilton, I have read this paper carefully, and if the 
statements are true, I draw from them four conclusions." 

Mr. Tilton asked what the conclusions were. 

Dr. Storrs then said: 

First — That Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton had criminal 
relations. 

Second — That you discovered that. 

Third — That Mr. Beecher received a paper from Mrs, Til- 
ton denying that such relations had ever existed. 

Fourth— That Mr. Moulton got that paper from Mr. 
Beecher. 

Mr. Tilton said : "Dr. Storrs, what if those points can't be 
denied?" 

Dr. Storrs replied : " If those points cannot be denied, I 
have no advice to give. An evasion would be worse than 
silence. 

Eeporter — Did Mr. Tilton tell Dr. Storrs all the facts in the 
case. 

Mr. Carpenter — He did not. He told me he did not want 
to bring disgrace upon his wife, and, when he obtained from 
her the admission which he took to Dr. Storrs, he said he pre- 
ferred that it should be made as delicate for Elizabeth as pos- 
sible, but he could not bear to have the world think that he 
was attacking Mr. Beecher without just provocation, when the 
truth was exactly the opposite. 

Reporter — Have you read Samuel Wilkeson's letter? 

Mr. Carpenter — Certainly. Mr. Wilkeson has surely been 
misinformed. The idea that Theodore Tilton attempted to 
blackmail anybody, I can' dispose of in about five minutes; 



TILTON IN THE MIGHT. SQd 

and I am glad you mentioned Wilkeson's communication. Mr. 
Bowen employed Mr. Til ton to edit the Independent and the 
Union, making a contract for five years. The contract pro- 
vided that, in case Mr. Bowen should violate its terms, the for- 
feit should be six months' salary in advance. Mr. Tilton was 
discharged. He naturally expected that Mr. Bowen w r ould, ac- 
cording to the contract, pay him six monihs' salary. The 
matter was left to arbitration. The gentlemen selected as ar- 
bitrators were James Freeland, Horace B. Claflin and Charles 
Storrs. Both Mr. Bowen and Mr. Tilton declared that they 
would abide by the finding of these arbitrators. Messrs. Free- 
land, Claflin and Storrs examined the contracts made between 
Mr. Tilton and Mr. Bowen, and, in a few moments, decided 
that Mr. Bowen ought to pay principal and interest to Mr. Til- 
ton up to the last penny of the amount claimed. "This," 
said Mr. Carpenter, "is the truth about the so-called 'black- 
mailing' operation of Mr. Tilton's. It is just such abuse and 
misrepresentation of Tilton as this that has induced me to 
speak. I have felt and do feel very much as Frank Moulton 
does. Theodore Tilton is in the right in this matter. He 
should not be sacrificed. And I say this as an ardent ad- 
mirer of Henry Ward Beecher. Frank Moulton was sincere 
when he said he loved Beecher, but beyond and above the love 
and admiration for that man, there is a controlling considera- 
tion of justice, and I know Frank Moulton too well to believe 
that he will think of shielding Henry Ward Beecher by wrong- 
ing Theodore Tilton. 

Reporter — Have you any statement or explanation to make 
concerning your affidavit charging that Mr. Beecher told you 
he would share his fame, fortune and honor with Mr. Tilton, 
in case Tilton would do certain things? 

Mr. Carpenter — Only this: That I made that affidavit so 
that it would bear as lightly against Mr. Beecher as possible. 

Reporter — Do you still refuse to give the substance of the 
conversation you had with Mr. Beecher on the evening of June 
1st, 1873? 

Mr. Carpenter — I do. No power save a legal tribunal shall 
oblige me to make public the statements in that interview. 

Reporter — In alluding to Mr. Tilton's character, you stated 
that Horace Greeley and Charles Sumner had both alluded to 
Mr. Tilton's case. 

Mr. Carpenter — Yes, Horace Greeley said to me : " Nobody 
can make me believe Theodore Tilton is a corrupt man — no 
1G* 



370 THUNDERBOLT OUGHT TO FALL. 

matter what Mrs. Woodhull says." In March, 1873, when 
Sumner was sitting to me for his portrait, he spoke of Tilton 
in these words: ""Theodore Tilton is a great writer. He is a 
man of genius. In reference to his domestic troubles, I doubt 
the propriety of longer silence on his part. I think the thun- 
derbolt ought to fall." 

I said : " How can you say that, when such interests are in- 
volved ? " 

Mr. Sumner replied : " I have been called into one such case, 
and I have seen the utter folly and futility of all measures to 
cover wrong." 

Reporter — What is your opinion of Mrs. Tilton's statement ? 

Mr. Carpenter — I hesitate to express an opinion, for Mrs. 
Tilton has made such unaccountable statements to me. For 
instance, you remember I told you I was present when she put 
in writing the statement that Beecher had solicited her. Less 
than a year after, in conversation with her, she told me that 
her admission in that letter was untrue. 

Keporter — Do you think Mr. Tilton published the Bacon let- 
ter because he thought it was Dr. Bacon's judgment that an 
investigation should be had ? 

Mr. Carpenter — I do. He appealed to Dr. Bacon for advice, 
but waited in vain for a single word of counsel. Dr. Bacon 
did say, however, to the friend who called on him in Theodore's 
behalf, that if Mr. Tilton did not make that letter public, he 
should be inclined to do it himself. Dr. Bacon had the ut- 
most confidence in Mr. Beecher's innocence, and, in the face of 
such serious charges, he very naturally and wisely wanted to 
see an issue made, and have the scandal settled finally and for- 
ever. 

Reporter—It has been stated that Mr. Beecher did not think 
he could consistently defend Mr. Tilton until the latter re- 
nounced Mrs. Woodhull and her associates. 

Mr. Carpenter — That is true. Mr. Beecher told me that if 
Theodore would take the public position he wanted him to, on 
the Woodhull question, he would pour subscriptions into the 
Golden Age office by the thousands. Oliver Johnson, at one 
time, prepared a statement for Tilton to sign in regard to 
Woodhull, but Tilton declined. Mr. Tilton asked his intimate 
friends not to lose sight of the fact that Mr. Beecher addressed 
to him the letter of apology six months before he (Tilton) ever 
saw Victoria C. Woodhull. 

Keporter — You said that the phrase in Mr. Tilton's original 



TILTON CHIVALROUS. 371 

letter to Dr. Bacon was one charging Mr. Beecher with a " re- 
volting crime.' 5 Yon added that this phrase was modified so as 
to read, "an offense which I forbear to name or characterize." 
Who was the friend of Mr. Beecher who induced Mr. Tilton to 
modify the language of the charge ? 

Mr. Carpenter — He was a friend of both Mr. Beecher and 
Mr. Tilton. 

Reporter — Was it Frank Moulton ? 

Mr. Carpenter — I decline to answer. But it was through 
his earnest pleading that the change was made. I remember he 
said: 

"Theodore, don't put that word ' crime' in there — make it 
easy for Beecher to explain." 

Mr. Tilton assented, with the assurance from this friend that 
the modification would bring from Mr. Beecher a public ac- 
knowledgment of an offense. 

Keporter — If Mr. Beecher knew of the existence of these let- 
ters, why did he challenge investigation? 

Mr. Carpenter— There are several reasons which will answer 
that question. You know he had previously been sustained 
to a remarkable degree by his Church. He may have known 
that Mrs. Tilton would sustain him, if it came to the worst. 
He may have supposed that the most important documentary 
evidence was destroyed, as did Mrs. Tilton. Or, driven to 
desperation, he may have courted the worst, for you remember 
he declared in one of his letters to Mr. Moulton: "Nothing 
can possibly be so bad as the power of great darkness in which 
I spend much of my time. I look upon death as sweeter far 
than any friend I have in the world." 

Reporter — What is your estimate of Theodore Tilton, as a 
moral man? 

Mr. Carpenter — 1 have scrutinized him for years, and I 
never could find in him, either in word or act, a suggestion of 
impurity. He is the cleanest man in his conversation I ever 
knew. Toward all women, Mr. Tilton is the most chivalrous 
of men. His references to his wife have invariably been of the 
most delicate and affectionate character. He has shielded her 
in every possible way. 

Reporter — Mr. Carpenter, yon have made some very impor- 
tant statements in regard to this scandal. 

Mr. Carpenter — I have still more important ones in reserve. 
And in conclusion I want the Argus to understand that I am 
the friend of Theodore Tilton only so far as his position is one 



372 CARPENTERS TELEGRAM. 

where he is fortified by truth. I have had an affection amount- 
ing to reverence for Henry "Ward Beecher. But I am afraid 
this case has been taken out of Mr. Beecher's hands by his 
enthusiastic and over-zealous friends. The statements I have 
made I am prepared to make affidavit to. The dates and 
names I have quoted, I have mainly obtained from my written 
record, for I have kept a diary for many years. 

In order to make his statement as complete and emphatic 
as possible, Mr. Carpenter sent the following telegram to the 
editor of the Brooklyn Argus, in which his interview was 
given : 

Homer N. Y., July 29th, 1874. 

To the Editor of the Argus : — Please add to my statement to-day that 
Mr. Tilton told Rev. Dr. Storrs and myself, in December, 1872, that he 
had not told and could not tell us the whole truth. 

Mr. Tilton never made a threat against Mr. Beecher. 

He only spoke in self-defence, and as a wronged and suffering man. 

In all references to Mr. Beecher's apology, Mr. Tilton always omitted 
the most important part of it — shielding his wife to Dr. Storrs, myself, 
and others. 

Frank B. Carpenter. 

The third week of the investigation ending August 1st, 
during which the above interviews occurred, developed little 
as to the doings of the committee. When Carpenter's state- 
ment appeared Oliver Johnson was interviewed and made gen- 
eral denials of the correctness of his statements. Members of 
the committee remained very reticent in their conversation 
with the gentlemen of the press who visited them by the score, 
but all seemed still disposed to shield Mr. Beecher. In the 
meantime Frank Moulton,the mediator between Messrs. Beech- 
er and Tilton, had been summonsed before the committee to 
testify, as the committee declared they wanted his evidence 
before Mr. Beecher put in his final answer and the case was 
closed. Mr. Moulton, however, had disappeared. 

While the reporters were chasing everybody in the country 
who was supposed to be able to throw new light on the scandal, 
and the committee were holding daily sessions, a very different 
scene was being enacted elsewhere. A reporter of the Argus, 



TILTON SUED FOR LIBEL. 373 

which throughout the investigation strongly championed Mr. 
Tilton's cause,went before a police justice and sued out a war- 
rant for the arrest; of Mr. Tilton for libelling Mr. Bee.cher. 
This extraordinary action created intense excitement. The 
complainant quoted the law justifying any citizen in making a 
complaint and the Justice held Mr. Tilton for examination on 
Monday, August 3d. 

It may be mentioned in this connection that on Friday 
evening, July 31st, Mrs. Woodhull and Miss Clafiin, accom- 
panied by Mr. James McDermott went before the committee 
to testify; but were not admitted. They then handed in a 
written statement of the facts they would testify to, but it 
was returned to them and they were driven froui the door. 
They had engaged passage to Paris on the steamer of the fol- 
lowing day, but after this rebuff they changed their plans and 
abandoned the European trip. Thus closed one of the most 
exciting weeks in the recollection of Brooklynites, with (to all 
appearances) the committee no nearer a solution of the scan- 
dal than when they entered upon the investigation. It may, 
however, be incidentally stated here, that the Brooklyn Eagle 
published the following letter for the genuineness of which it 
vouched : — 

My Dear Mrs. Tilton: — I hoped that you would be shielded from the 
knowledge of the great wrong that has been done to you, and through you 
to universal womanhood. I can hardly hear to speak of it or allude to a 
matter than which nothing can he imagined more painful to a pure and 
womanly nature. I pray daily fjr you, "that your faith fail not." You 
yourself know the way and the power of prayer. God has been your 
refuge in many sorrows before. He will now hide you in His pavilion 
until the storm be overpast. The rain that beats down the flower to the 
eartli will pass at length, and the stem, bent, but not broken, will rise 
again and blossom as before. 

Every pure woman on earth will feel that this wanton and unprovoked 
assault is aimed at you, but reaches to universal womanhood. 

Meantime your dear children will love you with double tenderness, and 
Theodore, against whom these shafts are hurled, will hide you in his heart 
of hearts. 



374 B EEC HER TO MRS. TIL TON. 

I am glad that this revelation from the pit has given him a sight of the 
danger that was before hidden by specious appearances and promises of 
usefulness. May God keep him in courage in the arduous struggle which 
he wages against adversity, and bring him out, though much tried, like 
gold seven times fired. 

I have not spoken of myself. No word could express the sharpness and 
depth of my sorrow in your behalf, my dear and. honored friend. God 
walks in the fire by the side of those He loves, and in heaven neither you 
nor Theodore nor I shall regret the discipline, how hard soever it may 
seem now. 

May He restrain and turn those poor creatures who have been given 
over to do all this sorrowful harm to those who have deserved no such 
treatment at their hands ! 

I commend you to my mother's God my dear friend ! May His smile 
bring light in darkness and His love be a perpetual summer to you! 
Very truly yours, Henry Ward Beechee. 



CHAPTER XV. 

MRS. TILTON'S CROSS-EXAMINATION — HER DESPERATE EFFORTS 
TO CLEAR THE CHARACTER OF THE ACCUSED PASTOR — A 
HIGHLY SEASONED PICTURE OF DOMESTIC INFELICITY AND 
BRUTAL TREATMENT OF ELIZABETH BY THEODORE — OUR 
"MUTUAL FRIEND MOULTON " HAS A SHARP CORRESPOND- 
ENCE WITH HENRY WARD, AND FINALLY AGREES TO MAKE 
A CLEAN BREAST OF ALL HE KNOWS — TILTON INSTRUCTS 
HIS COUNSEL TO BEGIN AN ACTION OF DAMAGES AGAINST 
BEECHER FOR THE SEDUCTION OF HIS WIFE — THE HUMOROUS 
SIDE OF THE SCANDAL — "SIR SINBAD'S ADVICE." 

/^~\N the afternoon of the 3d of August the Committee of In- 
^-^quiry published a card, requesting all persons knowing any- 
thing of the case to go before said body and testify on the fol- 
lowing (Tuesday) evening, which they intimated would be the 
last for receiving testimony. In the meantime, Mr. Carpenter 
had notified them of his determination not to appear. Mr. 
Moulton still kept away, and the criminal proceedings com- 
menced by Mr. Gaynor in the court had been abandoned. The 
public began to surrender all hope of the facts coming out, and 
disappointment was the natural consequence on the part of 
those who relish so stupendous a scandal. On Tuesday morn- 
ing Mrs. Tilton's cross-examination was published and the pic- 
ture she drew of her home and the erratic life of Theodore read 
like a novel. It is not the purpose of the author to gratify the 
depraved tastes of any one by giving all the cross-examination, 
but he selects that portion telegraphed over the country by the 
Associated Press, as a readable and unobjectionable sketch of 
it. Mrs. Tilton opens her cross-examination thus: — 



376 MRS. TIL TOW VERY HUMBLE. 

" I wish these gentlemen to understand that to a very large 
extent I take the blame upon myself of the indifference my 
husband has shown to me in all my life. At first I understood 
very well that I was not to have the attention that many wives 
had. I realized that his talent and genius must not be nar- 
rowed down to myself. That I made him understand. Also, 
to a very large extent, I attribute to that the later sorrows of 
my life. I gave him to understand that what might be re- 
garded as neglect, under the circumstances would not be 
regarded by me as neglect in him, owing to his- business and 
to his desire to make a name for himself and to rise before the 
world. At the birth of the first three children I had very 
severe and prolonged sickness, but when he saw me he never 
felt that I was sick, because on seeing him I always tried to 
feel well, I felt so desirous of his presence. It was charged 
upon me many a time by my mother and my brother, "When 
Theodore or the doctor comes you are never sick." They said 
of me, " She has never a genius for being sick." 

Q. Will you state just what attention your husband bestowed 
upon you, in case of sickness during your confinement, or any 
other illnesses if you had them? A. Well, I had no attention 
whatever, I may truthfully say, from him, any more than a 
stranger would give. I do not think it was from neglect so 
much as from an inability on his part to understand that I 
was sick and suffering, though in fact I was very seriously ill. 

In continuation, Mrs. Tilton stated that she was frequently 
sick, and her physician said there was care and trouble on her 
mind which he could not cure with medicine. 

Q. What was the trouble, in point of fact? A. Well, any 
one of you gentlemen, I think, would have cared for my family 
as much as Theodore did. I was left entirely with my servants, 
aud they were poor servants. I could not have my mother 
with me, because it was impossible for her to live with us on 
account of disagreement with Mr. Tilton. Tilton was dissat- 
isfied with his home and with his wife's management, and was 
harsh in his criticisms. 

Q. When did he begin to talk to you, if at all, in regard to 
your associations and friendship lor Mr. Beecher? A. 1 think 
I had no visits from Mr. Beecher before 18GG ; that is the first 
that I remember seeing him very much. 

Q. What was the criticism in regard to Mr. Beecher and 
yourself which Mr. Tilton made? A. I would like to go 
back a little here, for I think it will show you my manner with 



SUE WAS CLOSELY WATCHED. % 377 

Mr. Beecher when I lived in Oxford street. That was the 

first of this which Mr. filled my husband's mind, as early 

as 1805. Theodore then used to begin to talk to me about 
Mr. Beecher's wrong-doings with ladies, which he had heard 

from Mr. , and night after night, and day after day he 

asked me about Mr. Beecher. He seemed to be worried on 
that subject, so that when Mr. Beecher came to see me, Mr. 
Tilton immediately began to have suspicions, but, in order 
that I might be perfectly transparent to my husband with re- 
spect to my interviews with Mr. Beecher, whenever I was alone 
with him I used to make a memorandum and charge my mind 
with all the details of the conversation that passed between us, 
that I might repeat it to Mr. Tilton. It was so in regard to 
every gentleman who came to see me and with whom I sat 
alone. I was very closely watched and questioned, but especi- 
ally in regard to Mr. Beecher. I attributed those criticisms 

from Theodore to Mr. 's criticisms. I never had a visit 

from Mr. Beecher that I was not questioned. Theodore would 
question me till I thought I had told him all we talked about; 
and perhaps a day or two afterwards I would throw out a re- 
mark which Mr. Beecher had made, and Theodore would say. 
"You did not tell me that yesterday." I would say "I forgot 
it." "You lie," he would say, "you didn't mean to tell me." 
"Oh, yes I did .mean to tell you, but I forgot it." For two or 
three years I tried faithfully to repeat to my husband every- 
thing that I said and did until I found it made him more sus- 
picious than ever. He believed I left out many things pur- 
posely, while I was conscious of never meaningly omitting 
anything. I wanted Theodore to know everything that pass- 
ed between us. I often said if he would only come home and 
be there and know all. 

Q. When did his complaints against you change from the 
form of criticism to that of accusation, or something more than 
criticism ? A. In the latter part of the winter and early 
spring of 1869-70 he began to talk to me, assuming I had done 
w r rong. 

Q. In what respect? A. "With Mr. Beecher. 

Q. Criminally ? A. Y r es. I have been with him days and 
nights, talking this matter over, but I would like to have you 
know that these conversations lasted for years, and that the 
change of his thoughts from " the old to the new," as he called 
it, was gradual. I used to think his suspicions of me were 
caused by his not being at rest in his own mind. 



378 THEODORE WAS JEALOUS 

> 

Q. When lie assumed you had been guilty of criminal inti- 
macy with Mr. Beecher, how did you treat the subject ? A. 
For a time I was very angry, and expressed myself to him as 
strongly as I possibly could. I became angry and said I would 
not be talked to in that way. 

Q. State whether or not you invariably denied that you ever 
had any criminal intimacy with Mr. Beecher. A. I have in- 
deed. I remember that he not only charged me with this in 
my presence, but often became so audacious as to write to me 
about it, and that seemed to me unpardonable. 

Q. In making those offensive allegations what did he say ? 
A. As often as any way, he said, " You will not deny that you 
have had criminal intercourse," and he tried to frighten me by 
saying that he had seen certain things. 

Q. What things did he say he had seen ? A. I remember 
that once or twice he pretended that he saw me sitting in Mr. 
Beecher's lap at home, in the red chair in the parlor. In reply 
to this I said " You didn't." I do not know what you gentle- 
men will think, but you certainly can see that such a continual 
talk, year in and year out, would have its influence upon me. 
I came to be quite indifferent, except in regard to my anxiety 
about him. It was a sort of morbid jealousy that he had. I 
was worn out and sick with it. 

Q. Was it only in respect to Mr. Beecher that he made these 
accusations, or in respect to other people also ? A. In respect 
to Mr. Beecher only, at that time. About 1870 I believe he 
began to think that I had great admiration for several people 
besides Mr. Beecher. 

Q. Did he hesitate to mention names ? A No, sir, he did 
not. 

Q. How many different persons did he mention ? A. Two 
or three gentlemen acquaintances. 

Q. Did he ever make to you any charge or accusation, even 
with respect to Mr. Beecher, naming any definite time or place 
of any criminal act ? A. Oh, no, never. He never connected 
any time with it. 

Q. Did he ever pretend to you that you had been guilty of 
any impropriety with Mr. Beecher at his (Beecher's) house ? 
A. No. He wondered why I went there on two or three occa- 
sions. I went on errands. I attended Mr. Burgess a great 
deal at the time of his death. He was a poor man and I went 
to Mr. Beecher two or three times to see him in regard to that 
man. 



NEVER CONFESSED TO HIM. 379 

Q. Did you ever meet Mr. Beecher at other places by ap- 
pointment ? A. Never at all; not once. 

Q. Did Mr. Til ton ever base any accusations against you 
upon any admissions which you had made to him, either with 
respect to an event at Mr. Beech er's or your house, or any 
other place ? A. Yes; he based an accusation against me in 
his public statement, upon an interview which I had with Mr. 
Beecher in my second-story room, and I deny it in my public 
statement. 

Q. In any conversation with you at any time did he accuse 
you of any wrong-doing with Mr. Beecher, based on any 
admission by you ? A. No, sir. 

Q. Is it true that in July 1870 you confessed to your hus- 
band any act or acts of impropriety with Mr. Beecher ? A. 
No. 

Q. Did you admit to him any wrongs of criminal intimacy 
with "Mr. Beecher at other places ? A. No, sir. 

Mrs. Tilton was next questioned in reference to her letter 
about Catherine Gaunt. She said she had no reference therein 
to adultery or thought of it. 

Q. What did you refer to? A. I will try to answer that 
question. The one absorbing feeling of my whole life has 
been Theodore Tilton. Neither Mr. Beecher, I assure you, nor 
any human being has ever taken away from me that one fact 
of my love for him. But I must say that I felt very great 
helpfulness in my own soul from having had the friendship of 
Mr. Beecher, and also of other people, as many women as men. 
I think that Theodore gathered up from all our talks in the 
summer of 1870 that I really found in Mr. Beecher what I did 
not find in him. He got that, I know. I gave it to him, but 
I often said, il Theodore, if you had given to me what you 
gave to others, I dare say I should find in you what I find in 
Mr. Beecher." 

Q. In your Schoharie letter you spoke of your sin. What 
did you mean by that ? A. Theodore's nature being a proud 
one I felt on reading that book that I had done him wrong — 
that I had harmed him in taking any one else in any way, 
although on looking it over I do not think but that I shouid 
do it again, because it has been so much to my soul. 

Q. Taking anyone else in what respect ? A. I do not think 
if I had known as much as I do now of Mr. Tilton that I 
would ever have encouraged Mr. Beecher's acquaintance. I 
think I did wrong in doing it, inasmuch as it hurt Theodore. 



380 THEODORE ASHAMED OF HER. 

I do not know as I can make myself understood, but do you 
know what I mean when I say that I was aroused in myself — 
that I had a self-assertion which I never knew before with 
Theodore? There was always a damper between me and The- 
odore, but there never was between me and Mr. Beecher. 
With Mr. Beecher I had a sort of consciousness of being more. 
He appreciated me. Theodore did not. I felt myself another 
woman. I felt that he respected me. I think Theodore never 
saw in me what Mr. Beecher did. 

Mr. Sage — Do you mean to say that Theodore put down self- 
respect in you, while Mr. Beecher lifted it up ? 

Answer — Oh yes ! I never felt a bit of embarrassment with 
Mr. Beecher, but to this day I never could sit down with Theo- 
dore without being self-conscious and feeling his sense of my 
inequality with him. 

Witness continuing, said the sin she spoke of was nothing 
more than giving to another what was due to her husband, — 
that which he did not bring out. However, she did not feel 
now that there was any great sin about it. The sin was that 
she hurt .her husband's pride by .allowing any one else into her 
life at all. The wifely feeling she gave to her husband was 
pure. She gave Mr. Beecher nothing more than confidence 
and respect. She taught her daughters that if they gave their 
husbands what she had given to hers, they would do enough. 
Tilton frequently talked to her accusingly of the sensual effect 
of her presence upon gentlemen. His accusations were hard 
to live under. He seemed to be ashamed of her appearance, 
dress and bearings. On one occasion, in a company of his 
friends, he told her he would give $500 if she was not at his 
side. In hotels and public places on several occasions he said 
to her, "I wish you would not keep near me." It was evident 
to her that he did not want comparison made between them. 
It hurt very much. In 1870 she had a conversation with Til- 
ton regarding his own habits and associates, in which he con- 
fessed criminality with other women. She did not confess 
adultery to him. It was the other way. He confessed to im- 
proper relations with several other women, and told her he 
wished her to understand that when he was away from home, 
lecturing or isiting, if he desired to gratify himself he would 
do it. The world was filled with slanders about him. He did 
not seem to know it. He thought everything came from her, 
and said so. He declared that she was the originator of all the 
talk about him, and insisted upon her correcting these impres-. 



SUE WROTE AT HIS DICTATION. 381 

sions. He said on one occasion that a certain woman had been 
talking about him, and he wanted his wife to see her and put 
an end to it. She wont to the worn in and told h& she should 
have avoided adding to the stories already afloat, for her sake, 
when she replied, " Mrs. Tilton, do you know why I didn't? 
because the night before, your husband had told stories about 
yourself to such and such persons that came to me directty, 
and I was not going to allow an accusation of that character 
to stand against you." Wherever she went she found that 
Tilton had not only made these accusations against her, but 
had recounted the details, which ho has now published. Then 
he would deny to her that he had done so. 

Mrs. Tilton's attention being called to her husband's allega- 
tion about the improper caress, she said there was no truth in 
it. She also denied the bedroom story, saying : Theodore had 
been with us that morning; he had gone out ; Mr. Beecher 
was sitting in a large chair, and she had drawn up a smaller 
one. Beecher had in hand a little manuscript he was going to 
read. She did not remember what it was. The door from the 
bedroom to the hall was shut, and she had shut the door lead- 
ing from the sitting-room to the hall, which was usually open. 
She had no sooner done that (which was to keop out the noise 
of the children playing in the hall), and sat down by the side 
of Beecher, when Theodore came to the other door. Not five 
minutes had elapsed since he went out. There was no hesita- 
tion in opening the door. The folding doors were wide open. 
The door leading to the hall from the bedroom was locked, but 
that was not uncommon. Her closing the other door, which 
was seldom closed, perhaps made Theodore suspicious. 

Q. Was Mr. Beecher flushed when Theodore came in ? A. 
Not at all. 

Being next questioned as to the paper Tilton said she wrote 
to him in the latter part of 1870, stating that Beecher made 
improper approaches, witness said the paper she wrote was but 
a couple of lines, as far as she could remember. It was writ- 
ten at a time when nearly out of hpr mind, but what Theodore 
made her write she could not tell to this day ; was conscious 
of writing many things under his dictation, or copying them 
off and giving them to him. 

Q. Things that were false ? A. Oh yes ! 

Q. What benefit did he tell yon would come, if you would 
make these statements ? A. He said this statement was to help 
him in the matter with Mr. Bowen. I did not understand 



3S2 THEODORE DICTATED THE NOTE. 

how it was, but instead of going to Mr. Bowen with it he went 
to Mr. Moulton, and that quite startled me. 

Q. Did Mr. Beecher make any improper suggestions or re- 
quest to you ? A. Why, no, sir. It was utterly ialse. 1 have 
done many things like signing that paper. There is a certain 
power Theodore has over me, especially if I am sick, and he 
Jiardly ever came to me while I was in any other condition to 
do anything of that sort. One or two letters I sent West will 

bear witness to that. I wrote a letter to Mrs. in one ten 

minutes, and in the next ten minutes wrote another letter to 
her with a statement contrary to that of the first. The first 
was written under Mr. Tilton's influence. After having writ- 
ten it I said to myself, " Why, I have stabbed Mr. Beecher," 
and I wrote in a second letter, " For God's sake don't listen to 
what I said in the first." I never have written a letter of my 
own in regard to this matter, except one very small letter in 
which I desire to confess. It was with regard to my mother. 
In that letter I gave her a very cruel stab. I wrote that, but 
the others are entirely of Mr. Tilton's concocting. 

Mrs. Tilton admitted that she copied a note containing the 
words, " Mr. Beecher desired me to be his wife with all that 
it implies," which note was to be shown to Dr. Storrs. She at 
first refused, but he said he needed it because it would be a 
great deal better than anything he could write, and it was not 
anything after all. She replied, " It is not true, and what will 
Mr. Beecher say ?" Frank Carpenter was present, but could 
not hear, as they spoke low. Mr. Tilton told her he had but 
fifteen minutes, and she sat down and wrote the note. It is 
absolutely false, but she wanted to make a strong statement. 
She thought it wickedly wrong, as it was. There was trouble, 
and she thought it would in some way serve Theodore and 
bring peace. He had said the whole affair was some scheme to " 
get out of the Woodhull trouble. 

Mrs. Tilton then related how, the week after the council of 
churches was called, she, without consulting Theodore, went 
to Dr. Storrs and told him that the letter was false ; that she 
was not the author nor had she composed it in any way, and 
Dr. Storrs said he wished he had known it, for on that letter 
alone he had believed Beecher a wicked man. He asked her if 
she knew of the great sin she had done. She replied, she re- 
alised she had frequently done such things as that. She had 
no opportunity of explaining the circumstances, as the doctor 
was in a hurry and referred her to his wife. 



IT WAS NOT HER LETTER. 3S3 

Mrs. Tilton was asked if she ever saw the letter apparently 
from Beecher to herself dated February 7th, 1871. She replied 
never, until she saw it printed in Tilton's statement. 
Q. vDid you ever hear about it ? ■ 

A. 1 was never willing to have anything to do with Moulton 
Mr. Tilton wanted her to treat Moulton as a mediator, but she 
would have nothing to do with a third party. She would be 
trusted as hitherto, and if Mr. Beecher or any one else had 
anything to say to her, it should not come through Moulton. 
Papers came to her through him, and she would not look at 
them. Moulton one day insisted on reading to her what he 
called a very important letter which she refused to receive, and 
it went in one ear and out the other, so she remembered noth- 
ing of it except that it urged her to treat Moulton as a confi- 
dant on some common ground, against which she rebelled. 

Q. Do you recollect a letter beginning, "My dear husband, 
I desire to leave with you, before going to bed, a statement that 
Mr. Henry Ward Beecher called upon me this evening and 
asked me if I would defend him against any accusation in a 
council of ministers/' and ending, "Affectionately, Elizabeth?" 
A. Yes, sir; but that is not my letter. 

Q. How was it written ? A. In the same way as those which 
I have already explained. I have no other explanation for any 
of them that were written in bed. Mr. Tilton wrote it first, 
and I sat on my sick bed and copied it. 

Mr. Cleveland — Is that true of all the letters that have that 
signature? A. Yes, sir; so far as my authorship of them is 
concerned. 

Mr. Winslow — Was he excited? A. He was always very 
much excited about his own public difficulties. 

Q. Had he been out that evening? A. Yes; he had been to 
Frank Moulton's. 

Mr. Hill — What time did he get home ? A. My nurse had 
gone to bed and he found me in bed. I was very sick and my 
nurses were greatly disturbed. 

Q. When he first came in, what did he say ? A. I do not 
remember. 

Mr. Winslow — What led you to this act? A. His bring- 
ing me pen and ink and paper. He had the letter already 
written. 

Mr. Hill — What did he say about it ? A. Really I positively 
tell you I cannot remember. I felt often at that time utterly 
despairing and miserable, and it mattered but little what 
I did. 



384: SHE NEVER TOLD MRS. ANTHONY. 

Q. Was it; when you were sick from a miscarriage? A. 
Yes. 

Q. Do you recollect Mr. Beeclier calling that evening ? A. 

Q. When? A. Bat a few hours before I wrote that letter. 

Q. Can you remember that interview with Mr. Beeclier? 
A. It was a very similar one to the other. 1 was half uncon- 
scious and was very ill-prepared to see either of them. My 
room was all darkened, and the nurse had gone to hers. She 
opened the door and said that Mr. Beeclier wanted to see me. 
1 certainly do not know what to tell you about that either. 

Q. Do you remember writing some paper for Mr. Beeclier ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Can you recall the contents of that paper? A. No, I 
cannot. I think it was to do something for him because The- 
odore .had done something against him. 

Q. Is it true that he said anything to you about a council of 
ministers ? A. I do not remember everything about it. I have 
tried very hard, dear friends, to get into mind those scenes, but 
they have utterly gone out of my brain. Witness never told 
Mrs. Anthony she had committed adultery or done wrong with 
Mr. Beeclier, or anything to that effect. 

Q Did you ever tell any human being that you had been 
guilty of wrong doing with Mr. Beeclier? A. I never volun- 
tarily did so. Once my husband took me in Mrs. 's carri- 
age to the house of a lady to whom he had been telling stories 
about me and Mr. Beeclier. I went against my will, and when 
we got there he said, " I have brought Elizabeth herself to speak 
whether I have slandered her," and I did not deny him. It 
was the same thing as when I copied and signed letters which 
Theodore has prepared, and I am reminded of this. I do not 
know whether it was treachery, but many times he has said, 
" You have gone to Dr. Storrs and now he knows you are 
guilty." He found out that I had been to Dr. Storrs, and he 
was very angry. 

Witness here recounted the scene at her house when Susan 

B. Anthony was present, much as heretofore published, except 
that she told Miss Anthony that Tilton accused her of adultery 
with Beeclier, not that she had committed it. She told Miss 
Anthony that Tilton had charged her with infidelity with one 
and another, and that when he sat as his table many times he 
had said that he did not know who his children belonged to. 
She had spoken of it to another person besides Miss Anthony 



TILTON TO MR. SAGE. 3S5 

when she was aroused by Mrs. Woodhull's presence ai; her house, 
and by a visit from two of Mrs. Woodhull's sisters, whom she 
called the police to take away, but she had told these persons 
nothing more than what unjust accusations had been put upon 
her by her husband. 

The committee had made strenuous efforts to induce Mr. 
Tilton to present to them the documents in the case, but he 
had not done so. "Our mutual friend Moulton" returned 
home the night before the publication of Mrs. Tilton's cross- 
examination, and it will be seen finally consented to appear be- 
fore the committee. Mr. Tilton gives the following as his rea- 
sons for, at this stage of the case, ignoring the committee and 
beginning an action against Beecher for damages. On August 
3d he wrote to the chairman of the committee, Mr. Sage: — 

My Dear Sir : — I have just received your note of July 31st, four days 
after date. Unless you accidentally misdated it, the communication should 
have come to me several days ago. This leads me to recall a similar 
dilatoriness of the delivery of your original note first summoning me to 
your committee, which I received only four hours before. I was to appear, 
and yet the summons bore the date of the day previous. But let these 
trifles pass. Your note just received surprises me by its contents, for you 
seem to have forgotten that on the last day of my appearance before your 
committee, I carried to your meeting not only all the documents which I 
quoted in my sworn statement (save those in Mr. Moulton's possession) 
but many more besides, making a double handful of interesting and import- 
ant papers, vital to my case and destructive to yours. All tbese papers I 
proposed to lay before you, but no sooner had I begun to read them aloud 
in your presence than one of your attorneys stopped me in the reading 
and proposed that I should save the committee time by referring these 
papers to one of your members — the Hon. John Winslow, I acquiesced in 
this question and retired from your committee with the expectation of a 
speedy conference with Mr. Winslow. Perhaps it was my proper duty to 
have called on Mr. Winslow, but as the whole committee had previously 
set the example of calling in a body on one of the other parties to this 
controversy, I took it for granted that Mr. Winslow would repeat the 
precedent by doing me the honor to call at my house, at which he would 
have been a welcome guest. But while waiting for his coming I was 
called upon instead by a policeman, who arrested me and carried me, at 
thirty minutes' notice before Justice Riley's police court to answer the 
charge of libelling the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, against whom I had 
17 



386 HE BIDS THE COMMITTEE FAREWELL. 

spoken not a libel, but the truth. Up to the time of this arrest I had 
employed no lawyer, not needing any, but on finding myself before a police 
court and not understanding the motive of my arrest, nor the methods of 
courts, I requested my friend Judge S. D. Morris to answer for me in a 
technical proceeding in which I knew not how to answer properly for 
myself. Twice already I have been before this unexpected tribunal and 
may be called before it a third time Wednesday next. Meanwhile my 
"counsel, to whom I have just shown your note, instructs me to lay no 
documents, papers, or remaining testimony before your committee, nor 
have further communication with you in any form, except to send you this 
present and final letter containing the reasons for this step. The reasons 
are as follows : — 

First. You are a committee of Mr. Beecher's friends, appointed by 
himself; expected to act in his behalf; assisted by attorneys employed 
exclusively for his vindication ; holding secret sessions inaccessible to the 
public ; having no power to compel witnesses ; having no opportunity for 
the opposite side to cross-examine such as voluntarily appear, publishing 
or suppressing their testimony as you see fit, and, so far as my own 
experience goes, asking no questions save such as were irrelevant to the 
case and omitting to publish in your imperfect and unjust report of my 
testimony all that was most pertinent to my own side of the controversy. 

Second. The daily papers of Brooklyn and New York have been art- 
fully fed day by day with crumbs of fictitious evidence against my own 
character, as if, not Mr. Beecher, but I alone, were the man on trial, and 
though I have little right, perhaps, to hold your committee responsible for 
this daily misrepresentation which may come through the malice of others, 
yet the result is the same to me as if you had deliberately designated it, 
and that result is this, namely : I expect no justice either from your tribu- 
nal, since you cannot compel witnesses to testify, nor from your reporters, 
since .they do not give impartial reports. 

Third. I cannot resist the conviction (though I mean no offence in 
expressing it) that your committee has come at last to be as little satisfac- 
tory to the public as to myself, and that your verdict (if you render one) 
could not possibly be based upon the full facts, since you have no 
power to compel witnesses, nor to verify their testimony by oath, nor to 
sift it by cross-examination. 

For these reasons, which ought to have moved me earlier, I have at 
last instructed my counsel to proceeed at once at his discretion to carry my 
case from your jurisdiction to a court of law, and in view of this instruction 
from me he has in turn instructed me to hold no further communication with 
your committee except this present letter of courtesy, in which I have the 



HEADS OF DIFFICULTY. 387 

honor to bid you farewell ; in doing which allow me to add that the respect 
which I am unable to entertain for your committee as a tribunal, I cannot 
help expressing for you each and all as individuals. 

Truly yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 

To go back a stage in the narrative we will embody the 
following correspondence. On July 21th, Mr. Beecher wrote : — 

My Dear Mr. Moulton : — I am making out a statement and I need 
the letters and papers in your hands. Will you send me by Tracy all the 
originals of my papers. Let them be numbered and an inventory taken, 
and I will return them to you as soon as I can see and compare, get dates, 
make extracts or copies, as the case may be. 

Will you also send me Bowen's " Heads of Difficulty," and all letters of 
my sister if any are with you. 

I heard you were sick — are you about again? God grant you to see 
peaceful times. Yours gratefully, 

F. D. Moulton. H. W. Beecher. 

Still there was no response, and on July 28th, Mr. Beecher 
wrote : — 

My Dear Friend : — The Committee of Investigation are waiting mainly 
for you before closing their labors. I, too, earnestly wish that you would 
come, and clear your mind and memory of everything that can bear on the 
case. I pray you also to bring all letters and papers relating to it, which 
will throw light upon it, and bring to a result this protracted case. 

I trust that Mrs. M. has been reinvigorated, and that her need of your 
care will not be so great as to detain you. 

Truly yours, H. W. Beecher. 

F. D. Moulton. Esq. 

Mr. Moulton had in the meantime visited his counsel, Gen- 
eral Butler, at Gloucester, Massachusetts, and on returning 
home responded: — 

Brooklyn, August, 4th, 1874. 

My Dear Mr. Beecher : — I received your note of July 24th informing 
me that you are making a statement and need the letters and papers in my 
hands, and asking me to send them to you for the purpose of having 
extracts or copies made from them as the case may be, that you may use 
them in your controversy with Mr. Tilton. 

I should be very glad to do anything that I may do, consistent with my 
sense of justice and right, to aid you ; but if you will reflect that I hold all 



388 MOULTON STANDS ON HIS HONOR. 

the important papers intrusted to me at the desire and request in the con- 
fidence of both parties to this unhappy affair, you will see that I cannot in 
honor give them or any of them to either party to aid him as against the 
other. I have not given or shown to Mr. Tilton any documents or papers 
relating to your affair, since the renewal of your controversy which had 
been once adjusted. 

I need not tell you how deeply I regret your position as foes to each 
other after my long and as you, I have no doubt, fully believe, honest and 
faithful effort to have you otherwise. 

I will sacredly hold all the papers and information I have until both 
parties shall request me to make them public, or to deliver them into the 
hands of either or both, or to lay them before the Committee, or I am 
compelled in a court of justice to produce them, if I can be so compelled. 
My regret that I am compelled to this course is softened by belief that 
you will not be substantially injured by it in this regard, for all the facts 
are, of course, known to you, and I am bound to believe and assume that, 
in the statement you are preparing, you will only set forth the exact facts ; 
and, if so, the documents, when produced, will only confirm, and cannot 
contradict, what you may state, so that you will suffer no loss. 

If, on the contrary — which I cannot presume — you desire the possession 
of the documents in order that you may prove your statement in a man- 
ner not to be contravened by the facts set forth in them, to the disadvan- 
tage of Mr. Tilton, I should be then aiding you in doing that which I can 
not believe the strictest and firmest friendship for you calls upon me to do. 
With grateful recollections of your kind confidence and trust in me, I am 
very truly yours, F. D. Moulton. 

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

This letter evidently caused Mr. Beecher to lose faith in his 
"dear friend" Moulton for on the same day he wrote to Mr. 
Moulton thus: — 

Brooklyn, August 4th, 1874. 

F. D' Moulion Esq.: 

Sir — Your letter, bearing date August 4th, 1874, is this moment received 
Allow me to express my regret and astonishment that you refuse me per- 
mission even to see certain letters and papers, in your possession, relating 
to charges made against me by Theodore Tilton, and at the reasons given 
for the refusal. 

On your solemn and repeated assurances of personal friendship, and in 
the unquestioning confidence with which you inspired me of your honor 
and fidelity, I placed in your hands for safe keeping various letters 
addressed to me from my brother, my sister and various other parties ; 



A SHARP LETTER. 389 

also memoranda of affairs not immediately connected with Mr. Tilton's 
matters. I also from time to time ad Iressed you confidential notes relat- 
ing to my own self, as one friend would write to another. These papers 
were never placed in your hands to be held for two parties, nor to be used 
in any way. They were to be held for me. I did not wish them to be 
subject to risk of loss or scattering, from my careless habit in the matter of 
preserving documents. They were to be held for me. In so far as these 
papers were concerned, you were only a friendly trustee, holding papers 
subject to my wishes. 

Mr. Tilton has made a deadly assault on me, and has used letters and 
fragments of letters, purporting to be copies of these papers. Are these 
extracts genuine? Are they garbled? What are their dates? What, if 
anything, has been left out, and what put in? 

You refuse my demand for these papers on the various pleas, that if I 
speak the truth in my statement I do not need them, that if I make a suc- 
cessful use of them it will be an injury to Mr. Tilton, and that you, as a 
friend of both parties, are bound not to aid either in any act that shall 
injure the other. 

But when I demand a sight of the originals of papers of which you are 
only a trustee, that I may defend myself, you refuse, because you are the 
friend of both parties ! Mr. Tilton has access to your depository for 
materials with which to strike me, but I am not permitted to use them in 
defending myself. 

I do not ask you to place before the Committee any papers which Mr. 
Tilton may have given you. But I do demand that you forthwith place 
before the Committee every paper which I have written or deposited with 
you. Truly yours, 

H. W. Beecheb. 

Mr. Moulton's answer was very decided : — 

No. 49 Remsest Street, Brooklyn, August 5th, 1874. 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher : 

My Dear Sir — In all our acquaintance and friendship I have never 
received from you a letter of the tone of yours of August 4th. It seems 
unlike yourself, and to have been inspired by the same ill advisers who had so 
lamentably carried your private affairs before a committee of your church 
and thence before the public. 

In reply let me remind you that during the whole of the past four years 
all the documents, notes, and memoranda which you and Mr. Tilton have 
intrusted to me have been so intrusted because they had a reference to 
your mutual differences. I hold no papers, either of yours or his, except 
such as bear on this case. You speak of "memoranda of affairs not 



390 A. TART REPLY. 

immediately connected with the Tilton matter." You probably allude here 
to a memoranda of your difficulties with Mr. Bowen, but these have a 
direct reference to your present case with Mr. Tilton, and were deposited 
with me by you because of such reference. You speak also of a letter or 
two from your brother and sister, and I am sure you have not forgotten 
the apprehension which we entertained lest Mrs. Hooker should fulfill a 
design which she foreshadowed, to invade your pulpit, and read to your 
^congregation a confession of your intimacy with Mrs. Tilton. 

You speak of other papers, which I hold " subject to your wishes," I 
hold none such, nor do I hold any subject to Mr. Tilton's wishes. The 
papers which I hold, both yours and his, were not given to be subject to 
the wishes of either of the parties. But the very object of my holding 
them has been, and still is, to prevent the wish of one party being 
injuriously exercised against the other. 

You are incorrect in saying that Mr. Tilton has had access to my 
" depository of materials ; " on the contrary, I have refused Mr. Tilton 
such access. During the preparation of his sworn statement he came to 
me and said his case would be incomplete unless I permitted him to use all 
the documents, but I refused; and all he could rely upon were such notes 
as he had made from time to time from writings of yours which you had 
written to me to be read to him, and passages of which he caught from my 
lips in shorthand. Mr. Tilton has seen only a part of the papers in my 
possession, and would be more surprised to learn the entire facts of the 
case than you can possibly be. 

What idle rumors may have existed in newspaper offices I know not, 
but they have not come from me. In closing your letter you say : "I do 
not ask you to place before the Committee any papers which Mr. Tilton 
may have given you ; but I do demand that you forthwith place before the 
Committee every paper which I have written or deposited with you." In 
reply, I can only say that I cannot justly place before the Committee the 
papers of one of the parties without doing the same with the papers of the 
other, and I cannot do this honorably except either by legal process com- 
pelling me, or else by consent in writing, not only of yourself, but of Mr. 
Tilton, with whom I shall confer on the subject as speedily as possible. 
You will I trust, see a greater spirit of justice in this reply than you have 
infused into your unusual letter of August 4th. 

Very respectfully, 

Francis D. Moulton. 

"While this correspondence was being conducted Mr. Moulton 
was seeking by correspondence with Mr. Tilton, a way out of 



TILTON CONSENTS TO EXHIBITING LETTERS. 391 

the difficulty which was successful, as will be seen by the cor- 
respondence below : — 

Brooklyn, August, 5th, 1874. 
Theodore Tilton Esq : 

My Dear Sir — I have received under date of July 25th, a letter, from 
the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in which he expresses the wish that I 
would go before the Investigating Committee and " clear my mind and 
memory of everything that can bear on this case " — referring, of course, 
to the controversy between you and him. 

I cannot, in view of my confidential relations with you, make any state- 
ment before the Investigating Committee, unless you release me, as Mr. 
Beecher has done, explicitly from my obligation to maintain your confi- 
dence. 

If you will express to me clearly a request that I should go before the 
Investigating Committee and state any and -all facts within my knowledge 
concerning your case with Mr. Beecher, and exhibit to them any or all 
documents in my possession relating thereto, I shall, in view of Mr. 
Beecher's letter, consider myseif at liberty to accede to the request of the 
Committee, to state such facts and exhibit such documents. 

Very respectfully, 

Francis D. Moulton. 
Brooklyn, August, 5th, 1874. 
Francis D. Moulton Esq.: 

My Dear Sir — In response to your note of this day mentioning Mr. 
Beecher's request that you should exhibit to the Committee the facts and 
documents hitherto held in confidence by you touching his difference with 
me, I hereby give you notice that you have my own consent and request 
to do the same. Truly yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 

Having thus secured the cousent of both parties to the con- 
troversy to appear before the Committee with all the docu- 
mentSjMr. Moulton addressed the Committee thus: — 

moulton's reply. 
Gentlemen of the Committee : — I have received your invitation to 
appear before you. I have been ready, on any proper occasion, to dis- 
close all the facts and documents known to me or in my possession relat- 
ing to the subject matter of your inquiry, but I have found myself 
embarrassed because of my peculiar relations to the parties to the con- 
troversy. Friendly for years to all of them, and at the time of the outbreak 
of this miserable business having the kindest feeling toward each, I 



392 MOULTON CONSENTS TO UNLOAD. 

endeavored to avert the calamity that has now fallen upon all. Most fully 
and confidentially trusted by all parties, it became necessary that I should 
know the exact and simple truth of every fact and circumstance of the 
controversy, as I was made by mutual consent in some sort the arbiter of 
the affair, and, after, the estrangement, the medium of communication 
between the parties, each saying in writing to me such things as were 
^desired to be said or written to the others ; and in such case I gave the 
information or showed the communication to the person intended to 
receive or be affected by it. Under these circumstances I have not felt at 
liberty to give testimony or facts thus obtained in the sacredness of 
confidence before a tribunal not authorized by law to require them, how- 
ever much otherwise I might respect its members and objects, without the 
consent of the parties from whom I received the disclosures and documents. 
With the consent or request of Mr. Beecher or Mr. Tilton. I have held 
myself ready, sorrowingly, to give all the facts, that I know about the 
objects of inquiry of the Committee, and produce whatever papers I have 
to the Committee, and leave copies of the same with them, if they desired 
it, with perhaps the one stipulation, that if I have to give my evidence 
orally or be cross-examined, I might bring with me a phonographic 
reporter, in order that I should have an exact copy of my testimony, for 
my own protection. 

I am to-day in receipt, from Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Tilton, 
of their consent and request, thus absolving me thereby from my confi- 
dential relations towards them, to appear before you, and to give you the 
facts and documents with reference to the difference between them. 

It appears to me that, as Mr. Tilton has given his evidence, and Mrs. 
Tilton likewise, Mr. Beecher should be requested to add his own, in order 
that the three principal parties in the case shall have been independently 
heard on their own responsibility before I am called to adduce the facts in 
my possession derived from them all. 

Nevertheless, since I am now fully released from my confidential 
relations with the parties involved in this sad affair, and since my only 
proper statement must consist of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, I see no special reason why it may not be made at one time 
as well as at another ; but as my statement will necessarily include a great 
multiplicity of facts and papers, I must ask a little delay to arrange and 
copy them. Accordingly, I suggest Saturday evening, August 8th, as 
an evening convenient for me to lay my statement before the Committee. 

Yours truly, 

Francis D. Moulton. 

Brooklyn, August 5th, 1874. 



THEODORE 8 INSANITY. 393 

During the remainder of the week there were no important 
revelations beyond an attempt made by the Brooklyn Eagle 
to establish the insanity of Mr. Tilton, in the interest of 
Mr. Beecher, and a counter attempt on behalf of the friends of 
Mr. Tilton to impeach the damaging charges made by his wife. 
In support of the theory of Theodore's insanity the Eagle pub- 
lished alleged facts in connection with Tilton's family showing 
a tendency to insanity; but these publications were accepted 
by the public as an effort on the part of some of Mr. Beecher's 
ill-advised friends to direct attention from the real issue to mat- 
ters entirely foreign to the inquiry. The other parties however 
were more successful, for a part of Mrs. Tilton's statements was 
most effectually impeached by a card from Rev. Dr. Storrs, a 
letter from Mr. Carpenter, and by the statements of Mrs. 
Woodhull, who clearly showed that the charge made by Mrs. 
Tilton that she had called the police to expel Mrs. W. from her 
house was false. The testimony of the latter, however, would 
not be accepted, were it not that Dr. Storrs' card clearly im- 
peached her on other points, and public opinion reasoned that 
if this unfortunate lady would misrepresent in one matter she 
would in others, or all of her statements. It was expected that 
Mr. Moulton would present his statement, accompanied by all 
the correspondence, on Saturday, August 8th, but the day pre- 
ceding that set forth for his appearance he was requested by 
the committee to defer its presentation until Monday evening, 
the 10th. In the meanwhile there had been ugly rumors in 
circulation to the effect that the committee were endeavoring 
to effect a compromise, and force was given to these rumors by 
this action of the committee. 

Dropping the thread of our narrative for the nonce, we will 
speak of the excitement attending the publication of matters 
connected with the scandal. No event since the assassination 
of Abraham Lincoln attracted so much notice from the press. 
With the exception of four or five, the scandal found a place in 
all the leading journals of the country, and the illustrated 
17* 



394 "SCANDALS." 

papers' corps of artists united with the heavy writers of the 
daily press, in expressing in pictures what the editors expressed 
with the pen. Some of the cartoons were grossly indecent and 
uncalled for, at least until the pastor of Plymouth Church had 
been convicted. One of the most cruel was produced in the 
Cincinnati Giglampz. It represented Mr. Beecher driven out- 
side the walls of a city, dressed as a leper, in a flowing robe, 
leaning upon a staff, the breast bare and branded with the letter 
A. Underneath the cartoon was the quotation : — 

"Room for the leper! room!" — and as he came, 
The cry passed on, " Room for the leper, room ! " 

The press was the vehicle for many clever criticisms at the 
expense of the parties to the scandal. One of the most reputa- 
ble of the daily journals — the Chicago Inter-Ocean — collected 
and published them from time to time under the head of ''Scan- 
dals." Here is a specimen : — 

Susan stand up and shame the devil. 

It is easier for a camel to skip through the eye of a needle 
than for a " nest-hider " to walk into heaven. 

We find Mr. Tilton saying at one time that his wife is as 
pure as an angel; at another that she is as false as Lucifer. 

The prevalent sentiment in the Southern press is that the 
gunning season in Brooklyn ought to have set in long ago. 

Let us remember that neither religion, sects, nor virtue are 
touched by the scandal and infirmities involved in this Brooklyn 
exposition. 

Susan B. Anthony was interviewed the other day concerning 
that about Beecher. Nothing was elicited, except that Susan's 
age is 55. 

A " social cataclysm " is what they call it in the intellectual 
department of the New York Tribune. We should think it 
was at least that, if not more. 

Suppose it should turn out simply that the man found the 
woman unduly attached to him, and cursed himself in that 
way for having been the cause of such a passion ? 

Miss Anthony who was present when Nathan put it to 
David about Mrs. Uriah, says she cannot remember anything 



AFTER TILTON'S POEM. 395 

that has so deeply affected her since that time as the present 
troubles in Brooklyn. 

It is rumored that the Kev. Henry Ward Beech er has be- 
come involved in a rather awkward scrape with some woman 
or other in Brooklyn. If there is any truth in this, it is very 
strange that nothing is said about it in the newspapers. 

"Is there nothing," exclaims a Brooklyn Journal, "to redeem 
Plymouth Church from this body of death?" Unless the ca?e 
will yield to the marvelous influence of Hembold's buchu. it 
may be regarded as hopeless. 

See here, where is George Francis Train? This is the first 
fight that he hasn't taken a hand in, and he hasn't fired a single 
pistol shot at the air or made a single speech. Come to the 
front, George, and wake snakes. Speak for Ireland, for Wood- 
hull, the devil, or anybody. Otherwise there is a good chance 
for an unprofitable sleep. 

That all may know the doubted foot 

That wears the dirty sandal, 
Investigation boldly lit 

Investigation's candle. 
And now it's groping for the nit 

That hatched the Plymouth scandal. 
And soon a curious world may get 

The secret by the handle. 

The newspaper offices were flooded with poems on the sub- 
ject, which usually found a harbor in the waste baskets. One, 
however, we will give as it is after Mr. Tilton's poem " Sir, 
Marmaduke's Musings : 

SIR SINBAD'S ADVICE. 

" Cling not to earth, there's nothing there, 
However loved, however fair, 
But on its features still shall wear 
The impress of mortality. 

The voyager on the stormy deep, 
Within his barque may smile and sleep — 
But bear him on, he will not weep 
To leave its wild uncertainty. 



396 " SIR SINE AD'S AD VICE:' 

Trust not to wealth— as well you may 
Trust Asia's serpent's glittering play, 
That dazzles only to betray 

To death, or else to misery. 

Trust not to Friendship — there may be 
A word, a smile, a grasp for thee, 
But wait the hour of need and see — 
v Nor wonder at its falsity. 

Trust not to woman — she can smile, 
And raise the d — 1 all the while : 
Or, like ' Vic. Woodhull,' can beguile 
With ' Free Love's new philosophy.' 

Trust not to beauty ! Like the rest, 
She wears a lustre on her crest — 
But short the hour, ere stands confest : 
Her falsehood or her frailty ! 

Trust not to Fame ! Her laurels wilt ! 
Watered by burning tears of guilt, 
The Temple-altar Fame hath built, 
In shattered ruin soon may lie ! 

Oh ! trust to nothing here below, 
In all this world of Sin and Woe ; 
And pray that women ne'er may know 
' Vic. Woodhull's ' nice morality. 

Why bend your noble head in shame, 
* Sir Marmaduke ' of lofty name. 
What cares the world for you, or fame ; 
It won't believe in Truth to-day! 

O ! cling not then, so fondly on 
The flowers of earth around thee strewn- 
Vic. says : they'll do to sport upon, 
But never to love fervently." Jt 



CHAPTER XVI. 

History of Plymouth Church — Particulars of its Early Or- 
ganization — some statistics of its income — exciting events 
Connected with Mr. Beecher's Pastorate, and the Distin- 
guished Persons who have Appeared in the Edifice. 

~TVT"0 work of this character would be complete that omitted a sketch of 
INI this Church, which has recently become so famous, and hence this 
chapter will be devoted to the Church, and some of the exciting incidents 
connected with it. The ground on which the present buildings of 
Plymouth Church stand comprises seven lots, 88 feet by 200 feet, and 
extends from Orange street to Cranberry street, forming a part of what 
is known to old Brooklynites as the " Hicks estate," the property at one 
time having belonged to John and Jacob M. Hicks, representatives of one 
of the oldest and wealthiest families of Brooklyn, Hicks street having 
been named after the family. In 1823 the First Presbyterian Church 
purchased the property of the Hickses, and erected thereon a church 
edifice, fifty-six by seventy feet, fronting on Cranberry street. At that 
period the little village of Brooklyn possessed a population of less than 
one thousand people, and the erection of a church on what was regarded 
and known as farm property, and in the midst of green fields, where 
cattle were wont to browse, was looked upon with feelings of doubt and 
distrust. But, notwithstanding the prophecies of a few timid members 
of the congregation, the society waxed strong and grew in grace and 
wisdom until the dimensions of the church edifice became so contracted 
that an addition of eighteen feet to the building could no longer be 
delayed. Accordingly, in 1831, a lecture room, including Sunday school 
rooms and a pastor's study, thirty six feet by seventy -two feet, were 
added to the already prosperous little church. 

Rev. Joseph Sanford was called to assume pastoral charge of the new 
congregation, and continued in that capacity from 1823 to 1829, a period 
of five years, when he was superseded by the Rev. Daniel L. Carroll, D.D., 
who was succeeded in turn in 1837 by the Rev. Samuel H. Cox, D.D., a 
name familiar to old church goers of this city. The Rev. Dr. Cox con- 
tinued in charge of the congregation even after the society had removed, 
in 1847, to their new < hurch edifice on Henry street, near Clark. 

Among all these churches, and in a city with a population of G0,000 
souls, there was but one Congregational Church (the Rev. R. M. Storrs, 
Jr., Church of the Pilgrims). The necessity for an additional Congrega- 
tional Church was therefore felt and demanded. Accordingly Messrs. 

397 



398 ORGANIZA TION OF PL YMO UTH. 

John T. Howard, Henry C. Bowen, and Setli B. Hunt, of the Church of 
the Pilgrims, and Mr. David Hale, of the Broadway Tabernacle, held a 
consultation with a view to establishing a new Congregational Church. 
And inasmuch as the congregation of the Rev. Dr. Cox, known as the 
First Presbyterian Church, were about removing to their new edifice on 
Henry street, near Clark, the property which they had heretofore occupied 
on Cranberry street was offered for sale at $35,000. The locality and 
purchase money asked for the Cranberry street church property seemed 
"to impress the foregoing gentlemen as a favorable spot for the establish- 
ment of a new church organization, and after due deliberation Mr. 
Howard was authorized, on behalf of the committee, to purchase the 
property on the following terms : — $30,000 ; $9,500 payable in cash, and 
the residue, $10,500, to remain on mortgage. In June, 1846, the sale was 
consummated, and, according to the manual of Plymouth Church, Messrs. 
Charles Rowland, David Hall, Jira Payne, David Griffin, Henry C. 
Bowen, and John T. Howard held a meeting on Saturday evening, May 
9th, 1847, at the residence of Henry C. Bowen, having for its object the 
formation and establishment of a new Congregational Church in Brook- 
lyn : — " The meeting was opened by prayer, after which David Hale 
made some statements in relation to the property now held by the Ply- 
mouth Church, and then, in behalf of himself and the other owners, 
offered the use of said property for purposes of religious worship as soon 
as the premises should be vacated by the First Presbyterian Church." 
Whereupon it was 

Resolved, That religious services shall be commenced, by Divine permission, on 
Sunday, the 16th day of May, that being the first Sabbath after the house was to be 
vacated. 

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, at that time pastor of the Second Presby- 
terian Church, of Indianapolis, Ind„ and a young man, thirty four years 
old, happened to be in the city, having, through the influence of Mr. 
William P. Cutter, of New York, an intimate friend of the rising young 
Congregational preacher, been invited to deliver an address before the 
American Home Missionary Society in May, 1847. Mr. Beecher accepted 
the invitation, but for some reason delivered the address before the 
Foreign Missionary Society, instead of the society to which he was orig- 
inally invited to speak. Some of the members of the new Congregational 
Church heard Mr. Beecher's effort, and were so well pleased, that he was 
invited to preach the opening sermon of the Cranberry street Congrega- 
tional Church. 

The pew rents for such years as records have been kept were as fol- 
lows : — 



1853 . . 


. .$11,157 


1860 . . 


. . $28,682 


1867 . . . 


. $49,000 


1831 . . 


. . 11,729 


1861 . . 


. . 28,750 


1803 . . 


. 58,335 


1855 . . 


. . 12,053 


1862 . . 


. . 18,100 


1889 . . 


. 54,970 


1858 . . 


. . 12,505 


1853 . . 


. . 23,396 


1870 . . 


. 54,840 


1857 . . 


. . 14,310 


1284 . . 


. . 31,000 


1871 . . 


. 56,744 


1858 . . 


. . 16.30J 


1355 . . 


. . 39,612 


1872 . ' 


. 60,318 


1859 . . 


. . 28,052 


1356 . . 


. . 42,782 


1873 . . 


. 59,114 



Out of the pew rents of the last five years alone the sum of $78,950 has 
been applied to strictly mission purposes, exclusive of all expenditure 
upon the church or its own Sunday school. 

The collections of the church for benevolent objects of all kinds (ex- 



CONTRIBUTIONS. 300 

elusive of pew rents, but including- contributions in tlie schools), so far as 
any records remain, have been as follows : — 



1850 . 


. . . $1,873 


1851 . 


. . . 2.803 


1852 . 


. . . 1,815 


1853 . 


. . . 4,339 


18.54 . 


. . . 5,116 


1855 . 


. . . 6,083 


1856 


no record. 



1S5S . 


... $ 5,148 


1859 . 


. . . 6,340 


1860 . 


. . . 9,584 


1861 . 


. . . 11.980 


18)2 . 


. . . 18.103 


1863 


no record. 


1861 . 


. . . 11,144 



1866 . 


. .$90,742 


1867 . 


. . 18,564 


1868 . 


. . 39,712 


1869 . 


. , 11,520 


1870 . 


. . 18,938 


1871 . 


. . 27,033 


1872 . 


. . 19.783 


1873 . 


. . 33,221 



1857 . , . . 6.306 1865 .... 14,572 

These figures do not include any contributions not taken under the 
immediate supervision of officers of the church or society, and represent 
only a very small part of the donations of the congregation. Recently, 
an effort was made to ascertain the contributions of members outside of 
the church collections ; and it was found that over $300,000 had been 
given in one year, for charitable purposes, by the public subscriptions of 
a small portion of the member?. Concerning the private charities of 
these members, and the general donations of all the rest of the church, 
no trustworthy estimate can be made. 

The officers of the church, at the present time, are as follows : — 

Pastor — Henry Ward Beecher, installed November 11, 1847. 

Pastoral Helper — Samuel B. Halliday. 

Clerk of the Church — Thos. G. Shearman. 

Treasurer — Stephen V. White. 

Deacons — John T. Howard, Charles M. Morton, Reuben W. Ropes, 
Elmer H. Garbutt, Benoni G. Carpenter, Samuel E. Belcher, Robert R. 
Raymond, John B. Hutchinson, Henry W. Sage. 

Deaconesses — Mrs. Mary W. Halliday, Mrs. Frances L. Pratt, Mrs. 
Julia P. Hawkins, Mrs. Mary L. Thalheimer, Mrs. Isabella P. Beecher, 
Mrs. Mary A. Fanning. 

Examining Committee — Pastor, Pastoral Helper and Clerk (exoffioio), 
Daniel W. Talmadge(clerk),Lysander W. Manchester, Thomas J. Tilney, 
George H. Day, David H. Hawkins, Henry M. Cleveland. 

Music Committee — Pastor (ex-officio), Rossiter W. Raymond, John A. 
Fowle, Wallace E. Caldwell, Samuel E. Belcher, Horatio C. King, Henry 
N. Whitney. 

Committee on Church Work — Pastor (exoffioio), George A. Bell, Elmer 
H. Garbutt, Reuben W. Ropes, John T. Howard, Augustus Storrs, John 
B. Hutchinson, Assistant Clerk, Daniel W. Talmadge. 

Auditors — Lorin Palmer, Moses K. Moodey. 

Treasurer Deacons' Fund — E. H. Garbutt. 

Within the walls of this structure, rich and sacred with the memories 
of famous orators, legislators, statesmen, gifted women, literateurs and 
divines, has been heard the voices of the agitators of anti-slavery, when 
it was almost dangerous to speak the words aloud. The silvery-tongued 
Wendell Phillips, the scholarly and eloquent Sum ler, the gifted and 
erudite William Lloyd Garrison, the radical and impassioned Gerrit 
Smith, the brilliant Curtis, the statesman shoemaker Henry Wilson, John 
B. Gough, and scores of the greatest and ablest expounders of anti- 
slavery have given utterance to their views, and made the grand old 
edifice fairly ring with their eloquence and the magnetism with which 
they pronounced their convictions. It is here that Chapin, with glowing 
imagery and majestic and elegant English, has spoken " Woman's 



400 ADELINA PATTL 

Work " and the " Roll of Honor." Here Mrs. Livermore, Elizabeth. Cady 
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Tracy 
Cutler (the Western female lawyer), Lucy Harper, Henry B. Blackwell 
and Colonel T. W. Higginson, have explained and expounded the nature 
of their peculiar views, generally preceded by the late David Coombes, 
dressed in revolutionary costume, who, taking his stand in front of the 
platform, would proceed to unroll sundry mathematical problems, prov- 
ing beyond a doubt his claims on certain families, to whom he had loaned 
money some thirty years ago, until he was ejected from the building, in 
spite of withering glances which he cast at the disturber of wiiat he 
called "free speech." Here it was that the world-famed Casta Diva, 
Adelina Patti, sang her sweetest notes, in " Moses in Egypt," and thrilled 
the hearts of thousands by her rendition of the " Last Rose of Summer." 
Here Parepa has filled the building with her melody, and moved her 
audience to tears. Here Theodore Thomas and his orchestra have per- 
formed the inspired oratorios, symphonies and sonatas of Handel, Beeth- 
oven, Mozart and GHuck. Here poor Harry Sanderson, Mills and Ruben- 
stein " the great," have made the piano speak, and Ole Bull has evoked, 
by the aid of his magical bow, the poetry of sound. Charles Dickens, in 
the winter of 1887, told of " Tiny Tim," " Bob Crachit," " Boots at the 
Holly Tree Inn," and :' Poor Jo," and drew such crowds that carriages 
lined both sides of the street for blocks, while many encamped outside of 
the church on the previous night of the reading, by the light of bonfires, 
in order that they might secure seats. Here the famous Plymouth Organ 
concerts have been held on Saturday afternoons, and the great church 
organ (the largest, with one exception, in America) has pealed forth on 
Sunday mornings and evenings, its tidings of great joy. Here the Prince 
of Wales, and Presidents Lincoln and Grant have attended Divine service. 
It is here that Congregational singing is heard at the best, and, perhaps, 
in the history of no church has it been carried to such a high state of per- 
fection. The visitor to Plymouth for the first time will probably never 
forget the inspiration incited by the vast assemblage rising, and laterally 
singing with all their heart and soul, " The Shining Shore," " Jesus, 
Lover of My Soul," or "Homeward Bound." 

Probably no church in the United States has experienced so many 
anxious, exciting and memorable Sunday services as has Plymouth. It 
was on Sunday evening, June 8, 1856, that the services were of a peculiar 
exciting nature, it having been reported by the New York papers of that 
day that a gang of New York roughs expected to visit the church in the 
evening and create a general disturbance. The Mayor of Brooklyn and 
the Chief of Police were notified, and a large posse of police were detailed 
in citizens' dress to watch the evening services, while a number of the 
regular attendants of the church armed themselves with revolvers, and 
prepared to give the ruffians a good warm Congregational reception in 
case they should attempt to demolish the church building or disperse the 
congregation. As the hour for the evening service drew nigh, crowds 
and gangs of rough-looking men from the worst localities of New York 
and Brooklyn formed in front of Musical Hall, at Fulton and Orange 
streets, and on adjacent corners, and when the church was opened, a 
number of them walked in, but behaved with great decorum wheu they 
observed the immense crowd in attendance. After remaining awhile 
they passed out, muttering as they did so a few ill chosen remarks about 



ROSE WARD. 401 

" damned abolitionists and negro worshippers." Finally, as tlie audience 
were listening with almost breathless attention to Mr. Beecher, some- 
thing struck one of the windows to the east of the pulpit, rattled against 
the glass, causing considerable excitement among the ladies and other 
persons present who sat near the windows, and then dropped on the 
window sill. For a few minutes the excitement was intense, but after a 
time quiet was restored, and the equanimity of the congregation regained. 
It was subsequently discovered that the object thrown against the window 
was a bullet, evidently used by some mischievous person with a view of 
creating a sensation, or for the purpose of raising a prodigious excite- 
ment in the neighborhood. 

On Sunday morning, February 5, 1860, a little mulatto slave girl, ten 
years old, and valued at $900, occupied a seat by Mr. Beecher on the 
platform. She was brought to Brooklyn from Washington, D. C, by 
Rev. Bishop Falkner, then a member of Plymouth Church, but now 
pastor of the Mediator Congregational Church, Rochester avenue and 
Herkimer street. The reverend gentleman having obtained permission 
from her master, and determining to secure her freedom if possible, he 
introduced her to Mr. Beecher, by whom she was presented during the 
services of that memorable Sunday morning to his congregation, accom- 
panied by a statement of the object in view, and a request for a liberal 
contribution of money, in order that she might be rescued from slavery. 
The collection taken up that morning in the church, together with a col- 
lection taken up for the same purpose by the Sunday school in the after- 
noon, amounted in the aggregate to $1,000. The interest manifested by 
the congregation in the morning was very great, one of the ladies iu the 
audience, Miss Rose Terry, a sister of Major General Terry, dropping a 
gold ring in the contribution box as it passed. This ring was afterward 
placed by the pastor on the finger of the little slave girl with the remark 
that it was her freedom ring. She was then named after Mr. Beecher 
and Miss Terry, Rose Ward. 

On Sunday, June 1, 1861, a similar incident transpired at Plymouth 
Church, when Mr. Beecher called upon his congregation to witness a 
" live slave woman," and introduced a young girl about twenty years 
old, named Sarah, who had been told by her master that if she could 
raise her freedom money among her white abolition friends he would be 
willing to release her from slavery. Accordingly, with her owner's per- 
mission, she was brought North, with the promise that if the money was 
not raised she would be returned. Three hundred dollars of the freedom 
money had already been collected when she was brought to Brooklyn. 
When the announcement was made to the congregation of Plymouth 
Church that the sum of $800, exclusive of jewelry, had been raised by 
collection in the church, the applause that followed lasted for several 
minutes. 

On a Sunday in April, 1861, during the stirring and exciting period of 
early rebellion days, Mr. Beecher preached a sermon to the First Long 
Island (infantry) Volunteers, better known as the " Brooklyn Phalanx," 
and of which one of his sons was an officer. On the same day the congre- 
gation contributed at the conclusion of the morning services, the sum of 
$3,000, to aid in equipping the regiment for service in the field. 

In the autumn of 1862, the church played its part well in providing 
accommodations for the defenders of the Union, a regiment of Maine 



402 APRIL UTH., 1865. 

volunteers, " on its way to the front," occupying the building, and sleep- 
ing for two nights on its cushioned seats 

On April 12, 1865, a large number of the members of Plymouth Church 
and Mr. Beecher celebrated the fourth anniversary of the surrender of 
Fort Sumter, by Major Anderson, the steamer Quaker City conveying the 
Plymouthites to the fort, where Mr. Beecher delivered the address. On 
their return, while stopping at Fortress Monroe, the excursionists were 
grieved to hear that the fourteenth President of the United States, 
Abraham Lincoln, had suffered death at the hands of the assassin John 
Wilkes Booth, and when the party reached Brooklyn it was publicly 
aunounced that Mr. Beecher would preach a sermon on the martyred 
President on the following Sunday morning, April 24, 1865. The ser- 
vices on that memorable morning in spring will never be forgotten by 
those who participated in them. They are vividly portrayed in Harper's 
Magazine, by an eye-witness, as follows : — 

" Presently the seats were all full. The multitude seemed to be solid 
above and below, but still the newcomers tried to press in. The platform 
was fringed by the legs of those who had been so lucky as to find seats 
there. There was loud talking and scuffling, and even occasionally a 
little cry at the doors. One boy struggled desperately lor his life or 
breath. The ushers, courteous to the last, smiled pitifully upon their 
own efforts to put ten gallons into a pint pot. As the hour of service 
approached, a small door under the choir, and immediately behind the 
mahogany desk upou the platform opened qun-tly, and Mr. Beecher 
entered. He stood looking at the crowd for a little time without taking 
off his outer coat, then advanced to the edofe of the platform and gave 
some directions about seats. He indicated with his hands that the people 
should pack more closely. The ushers evidently pleaded for the pew- 
holders who had not arrived ; but the preacher replied that they could 
not get in, the seats should be filled that the service might proceed in 
silence. He turned and opened the door. Then he removed his coat, sat 
down, and opened the hymn book, while the orgnn played. The im- 
patient people meantime had climbed up to the window sills from the 
outside, and the great white church was like a hive, with the swarming 
bees hanging in clusters upon the outside. 

The service began with an invocation. It was followed by a hymn, by 
the reading of a chapter in the Bible, and a prayer. The congregation 
joined in singing, and the organ, skilfully and firmly played, preventing 
the lagging which usually spoils congregational singing. The effect was 
imposing The vast volume filled the building with solid sound. It 
poured out at the open windows, and filled the still morning air of the 
city with solemn melody Far upon every side those who sat at home in 
solitary chambers heard the great voice of praise. Then amid the hush 
of the vast multitude, the preacher, overpowered by emotion, prayed 
fervently for the stricken family and the bereaved nation. There was 
more singing, before which Mr. Beecher appealed to those who were 
sitting to sit closer, and for once to be incommoded, that some more of 
the crowd might get in ; and as the wind blew freshly from the open 
windows, he reminded the audience that a handkerchief laid upon the 
head would prevent the sensitive from taking cold. Then, opening the 
Bible, he read the story of Moses going up to Pisgah, and took the verses 
for his text. The sermon was written, and he read calmly from the 



JOHN O. WHITTIER. 403 

manuscript. Yet at times, rising upon the flood of feeling, he shot out a 
solemn adjuration, or asserted an opinion with a fiery emphasis that 
electrified the audience into applause. His action was intense, but not 
dramatic, aud the demeanor of the preacher was subdued and sorrowful. 
He did not attempt to speak in detail of the President's character or 
career. He drew the bold outline in a few words, and, leaving that task 
to a calmer and fitter moment, spoke of the lessons of the hour. The 
way of his death was not to be deplored ; the crime itself revealed to the 
dullest the ghastly nature of slavery ; it was a blow, not at the man, but 
at the people and the government ; it had utterly failed, and finally, 
though dead, the good man yet speaketh. The discourse was brief, 
fitting, forcible and tender with emotion. It was a manly sorrow and 
sympathy that cast its spell upon the great audience, and it was good to 
be there. 

" There was another hymn, a peal of pious triumph, which poured out 
of the heart of the congregation, and seemed to lift us all up, up into the 
sparkling, serene, inscrutable heaven." 

One of the most interesting events was the visit of New England's 
Quaker poet, John G. Whittier. The poet had not been in Brooklyn for 
many year?;, and being a very warm friend of the pastor, he attended the 
morning services. Mr. Beecher noticed the poet in the audience. This 
fact was shown by the selection of one of Mr. Whittier's hymns from the 
Plymouth Church Collection. And at the end of the services Mr. 
Beecher sent one of the ushers to the seat occupied by the gifted stranger 
inviting him forward to the platform. With much hesitation Mr. Whit- 
tier reached the altar, where he was most warmly welcomed by Mr. 
Beecher, who evinced his arreat pleasure at the honored presence of the 
great Quaker, by presenting him with a beautiful basket of flowers. Mr. 
Beecher then introduced the poet to several ladies and gentlemen, and 
then, in company, followed the modest stranger to his carriage. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SOMETHING ABOUT THE BEECHER FAMILY DR. LYMAN 

BEECHER — HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, AND OTHER MEM- 
BERS OF THE FAMILY WHO HAVE COINED REPUTATIONS 
IN RELIGION AND LETTERS. 

TDERHAPS in speaking of the Beechers it is safe to say that 
r*- no American family has become so distinguished in relig- 
ion and letters, nor is there anywhere,at this period of Ameri- 
can history,a family more widely known, more generally des- 
pised by some, more warmly appreciated by others, or more 
universally complimented for their rare and varied talents by 
others who have become accustomed to accept anything they 
give utterance to, as strictly orthodox. The progenitor of the 
present generation, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was in his day one of 
the most gifted lights of the American pulpit — a man of orig- 
inal thought, whose greatest delight was when engaged with 
the pen or voice in controversaries with rivals of the white 
cravat. Thrice married he had as issue, thirteen children, 
nearly all of whom in the various walks of life adopted by 
them, became more or less renowned. All the sons are,or have 
been, ministers, — an unusual thing for sons of a minister — and 
the daughters were equally distinguished, Every school child 
has become familiar with Catharine Beecher as the authoress of 
school books, and her experience as a teacher, and a writer on 
domestic economy was varied, indeed. Harriet Beecher Stowe 
won a world-wide reputation by her "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and 

404 



UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. 405 

"Dred," ana later a great deal of criticism from her ill-timed 
reference to the domestic affairs of Lord Byron. Many, many 
years ago, the author received his first impressions of the hor- 
rors of the slave system from reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, 
and young as he was, he recollects distinctly that the impres- 
sion of the author left upon his mind, was that of a woman 
whose sympathies issued forth from a warm heart as the waters 
flowed when Moses smote the rock. Another daughter is Isa- 
bella Beecher Hooker, who of late has taken an active part in 
the Woman's Rights movement, and who figures more or less 
conspicuously in this great, disgusting and unfortunate religi- 
ous scandal. In our narrative of the great sensation of the 
past five years, frequent reference is made to this lady, who 
however, it man be said, has never taken the ultra ground 
upon which Mrs. Woodhull stands, although recognizing and 
bearing testimony to the correctness of the ostracised and 
maligned priestess of the new social revolution. Of the sons, 
Henry Ward stands pre-eminently as the ablest representa- 
tive and the widest known. Several of the brothers in a 
more limited sphere of Christian usefulness have achieved 
fame and the love of all with whom they have been brought in 
contact both within the pale of the congregations over which 
they presiae and among the worldly minded who have learned 
to admire them for their generous qualities of mind and heart. 
Dr. Edward Beecher for many years located at Galesburg, Illi- 
nois, was recognized as the peer of the clergy of that State. 
He was the author of a number of radical theological works 
that encountered severe criticism, chief among which, per- 
haps, may be classed the Conflict of Ages. 

Then there is the popular, eccentric Thos. K. Beecher of El- 
mira, N. Y., who, in his way is as ultra and sensational as his 
more noted brother, Henry Ward. It is related of him that 
during the Fremont campaign in 1856, the Rev. Thomas de- 
clared that he would not shave or be shaved until John C. Fre- 
mont was elected President of the United States. It is not 
necessary to add that he ivears a full beard to this day. 



40 6 -A REMARKABLE FAMIL T. 

Eev. Ohas. Beecher, of Owego, 1ST. Y., is another of the 
same stamp, but younger and not so well known. 

There are several others, but enough have been sketched to 
justify the statement that the Beechers are a remarkable fami- 
ly — as remarkable as they are talented. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A BRIEF SKETCH OF HENRY WARD BEECHER — HIS SCHOOLBOY 
DAYS — PREACHING TO NEGROES — HIS EARLY MINISTERIAL 
LABORS IN THE WEST — SOMETHING ABOUT HIS THEOLOGI- 
CAL VIEWS — PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND ANECDOTES OF 
THE MAN. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER, the central figure in this 
volume, first saw the light on June 24th, 1813, and is 
now in his sixty-second year. He is the issue of Dr. Lyman 
Beecher's second wife, who died during the infancy of this 
afterwards- famous divine, and, of course, in early childhood he 
was not blessed with the maternal devotion that does so much 
to mould the character of the future man. Yet he had a step- 
mother possessing many excellent characteristics. His boy- 
hood differed but little from that of other children, yet early 
in life he betrayed an enthusiastic love for nature, and he was 
never happier than roaming the fields or forests gathering wild 
flowers and admiring everything beautiful in nature. Possessed 
of a high degree of vitality, he was often subject to severe disci- 
pline for overstepping the Puritanic idea of propriety. It was 
observed that he preferred to collect his lessons from nature's 
open book rather than from the duller teachings of the trained 
pedagogue, and still he is remarkable for that striking charac- 
teristic. He was graduated, we learn, from Amherst College 
in 1834, and then entered Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, of which 
Dr. Lyman Beecher was President, for a theological course. 

407 



408 - HIS FIRST MINISTRATIONS. 

He first began his ministry while taking this course. In the 
suburbs of Cincinnati was a colored church without any regu- 
lar pastor, and the congregation were only too happy to listen 
to the eloquence of the young student from Lane Seminary. 
In this colored church Henry Ward Beecher made his debut 
as a teacher of the truths of his Master, and probably it was to 
this circumstance that he owes the love he has ever since dis- 
played for his fellow-creatures and human freedom. His first 
regular settlement as pastor was at Lawrenceburgh, Indiana, 
in charge of a Presbyterian church. It was about this time he 
married Miss Eunice Leighton of Hill Farm, Massachusetts — 
a lady who has certainly up to this time well sustained the posi- 
tion of wife to one of the most distinguished divines that the 
nineteenth century has produced. Of his career at Lawrence- 
burgh we are told more minutely elsewhere. There he remain- 
ed from 1837 until 1839, when he was called to Indianapolis as 
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, which he had charge 
of for eight years. The fame of the young minister, however, 
had extended beyond the confines of the then little town of 
Indianapolis, and the great tidal wave of his popularity began 
to set in. He was very radical for the old staid Presbyterian 
church, and showed a desire to be independent, to accept the 
truth wherever found, whether within or without the Presby- 
terian faith. His sermons were oftener drawn from the 
fruits and flowers, the forests and hills, the birds and the 
beasts, than from the catechism and the laws and the prophets. 
(( It was," says a biographer, "during his residence here that 
he delivered and published a series of e Lectures to Young 
Men/ which were at the time very popular and were sold and 
read extensively at the East as well as in the vicinity where 
published. He was also editorially connected with an agricul- 
tural paper. In 1847 he received a call to become the Pastor 
of the Plymouth Congregational Church at Brooklyn, which 
was accepted and for nearly twenty-seven years he has held the 
position, and it is safe to say that no clergyman in America 



TUB PL YMO UTR P JJLPIT. 400 

has ever so quickly attained, or so long retained such a hold 
upon the masses as Mr. Beecher. He has been praised, flatter- 
ed, and almost deified by some, and villified, misrepresented 
and lied about by others. No man has ever preached to such 
congregations, for the hundreds who crowd his church are but 
a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands who hear his 
sermons, prayers and talks, through the medium of the press. 
Keporters attend his Sunday services, and his' sermons are re- 
ported and printed in full, formerly in the Independent, but 
now in pamphlet form called " The Plymouth Pulpit." The 
New York Herald reports and prints his weekly Lecture Room 
talks, and for years a Boston daily has, in its Saturday evening 
issue, published one of his sermons. But the Church is not 
t-he only avenue through which he reaches the public. He 
has, for many years been one of the most popular lecturers in 
the country ; and he is now the great star of the lecture room. 
Like Cushman, Booth or Jefferson of the stage, he can dictate 
his own terms, and managers will " see him "for they know he 
is sure to draw. He has also been a prominent stump speaker 
in all the more exciting political campaigns for years, and it 
may be said in this connection, that many of his so-called 
sermons were very like political harangues. He has also been 
connected with the press for a long time. Was one of the most 
popular writers for the Independent, his contributions being 
signed with an asterisk, became popularly known as the "Star 
Papers," and were subsequently published in book form under 
that title. He was at one time the reputed editor of the 
Independent, but was really little more than a contributor ; the 
editorial labors being performed by the late Joshua Leavitt 
and others, but it was a good card, and the publishers knew it 
would win." 

He has also for years written for the New York Ledger, his 

first contribution being a serial for which Bonner paid a very 

large price, and it was doubtless a very good investment; yet 

the same story written by an unknown author, probably would 

18 



410 TEE LIFE OF CHRIST. 

not have brought a hundred dollars. Mr. Beech er still writes 
short sketches and squibs for the Ledger. In addition to all 
these labors he has, until recently, been the ostensible editor of 
the Christian U7iion from its foundation, and his name has un- 
doubtedly been one of the principal levers which have hoisted 
.that publication into popularity. He also compiled and edited 
what is known as the " Plymouth Collection of Hymns and 
Tunes," and later he wrote the " Life of Christ," which has had 
a very large sale, and was very highly complimented by the 
critics. Mr. Beecher made one venture in imitation of Mrs. 
Stowe in the field of fiction, under the title of "Norwood," 
which, however, was not characterized by extraordinary vigor 
or originality of plot and design, and the fact that he had 
ever written it would probably soon have been forgotten had 
Theodore Tilton not recalled during his cross-examination at- 
tention to it, by remarking that Mr. Beecher used to bring the 
proofs of "Norwood" to Mrs. Tilton for her criticism and 
suggestion. 

From the foregoing sketch of his various occupations it will 
be readily seen that Mr. Beecher has been anything but a drone 
in the human hive; on the contrary he has been "abundant in 
labors." Not one in a thousand could have endured half so 
much, and yet to-day, not one man in five thousand is, at the 
age of sixty-two, so well preserved. 

In personal appearance Mr. Beecher shows that he has lived 
a life of activity, and given full development alike to mind and 
body — that, as one writer says, "he has realized to the fullest 
extent all the benefits, which Macbeth invokes for his guests 
when he says: — 

"And now may good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both.'* 
His head is large, and his face full, round and ruddy; eyes large, 
full and expressive; lips and chin heavy and suggestive of an 
epicure. Tilton reports him a voluptuary, but he has certainly a 
keen appreciation of the good things of this life, but his healthy, 
robust frame clearly shows that he has never so far abused the 



INCONSISTENCY OF CHARACTER. 411 

generous gifts of Providence as to make the acquaintance of 
dyspepsia. Certainly his general physique exhibits a highly 
animal organization, such as one would expect to find in the 
make-up of a well-fed butcher. Yet one look at his expressive 
face tells one that it is that of a man of no common character. 
One writer in sketching him and drawing a comparison 
between Beecher and Dr. Storrs of Brooklyn, said : — " Mr. 
Storrs has no lack of veneration; Mr. Beecher has no lack of 
the want of it." A more recent one says, " He looks like a man 
who loves the entire race of Adam, and would like to gather 
them to his bosom as a hen gathereth her young brood to 
shield them from the storm or threatened danger." 

It is reported of him that some years ago in discussing the- 
ology with his friend Rev. E. H. Chapin, (confessedly the ablest 
Universalist preacher in the country,) the latter remarked, 
"Well, after all, there is not very much difference in our belief." 
"Yes there is Chapin, a Hell of a difference," was the charac- 
teristic response of Beecher, and yet, not long after, he declared 
that no one could really believe the old Calvinistic doctrine of 
hell, and retain their reason for a fortnight. One week you 
would imagine him to be a Spiritualist, and the next he would 
inveigh against it in no measured terms. Consistency and 
uniformity are no elements in his character. Possibly his be- 
liefs do not vary so much as one would suppose, but his want 
of method and system in the preparation of his sermons fosters 
a loose mode of expression which makes him liable to be mis- 
understood. He does not sit down in his library on Monday, 
and build up his sermons according to the schools from " firstly " 
to "finally" but often selects his theme half an hour before 
going to church and relies upon his impulses, and the inspira- 
tion of the hour ; drawing from the storehouse of memory, or 
perhaps upon some incident of the moment for his illustrations. 
One anecdote on this point, which is probably untrue, and 
which the author learns Mr. Beecher has denied, is too good 
however to pass over here. The story goes that one very hot 



412 GOB FORGIVES AS A MOTHER. 

Sabbath morning lie entered his pulpit and when ready to be- 
gin his sermon, slowly arose, drew his handkerchief across his 
face, and casting his eyes over his congregation, exclaimed, 
"It is damned hot!"' The congregation were startled, but 
when he finished the sentence, "were the words I heard when 
I entered this church," and then preached one of the best ser- 
mons of his life on " Profanity," they were in ecstacies. This 
is the story, but whether true or false the author has no per- 
sonal knowledge. 

His manner in his pulpit delivery is in such utter disregard 
of church decorum that the holy sanctuary is sometimes called 
" Beecher's Circus." As we have already said he deals largely 
in metaphors or illustrations drawn from nature, or real life, or 
books. In the habits of a snail, the flight of a bird, the 
mechanism of a steam engine, the babbling of the brooks; 
either will give him the groundwork for one of his inimitable 
sermons. At times he walks up and down the platform terri- 
bly in earnest, like a well-schooled actor gesticulating wildly 
until fear seems to settle down upon his hearers. The next 
moment he will strike a vein of pathos in which his hearers 
are entranced, then he will suddenly run into the comic " and 
his queer conceits will be enforced and vivified," says a bio- 
grapher by the most comical gestures, and grotesque facial 
contortions, and the listener or observer must be more than 
ordinarily well anchored who can refrain from a good hearty 
laugh " right out in meeting " and the mental exclamation will 
involuntarily arise, " What a rare comedian." 

" In his illustrations he frequently uses some most beautiful 
figures, and whether studied and wrought out for the occasion 
or not, they always seem to be spontaneous. For instance, once 
discussing upon the loving kindness, and forgiving mercy of 
the Great Father, he stopped, was silent for a moment, an 
almost heavenly smile came over his face, and with a voice 
subdued and modulated as very few are capable of doing, he 
said, " God forgives as a mother, who kisses away into everlast- 



BEECHER '8 IDEA OF PROGRESS. 413 

ing forgetftilness the faults of her erring, but penitent child." 
" As previously remarked, Mr. Beecher is not a Theologian, 
and cannot be claimed by any school, although he has been 
for twenty-five years the foremost preacher in the country, and 
his church is called " Congregational; " yet he is not in accord 
with that denomination, and it is almost certain, that if he were 
a young, and unknown man, and should present himself before 
an association of Orthodox Congregational Ministers, as a can- 
didate for ordination and installation, as a Pastor, and should 
while under examination, avow a tithe of his disregard for the 
accepted doctrines of that organization, which he so freely and 
boldly preaches to his own people, he would be unanimously 
rejected as unsound and dangerous. Or if he should succeed 
by his wonderful magnetic power, in so mesmerizing a staid 
body of Puritan Clergymen, as to secure their indorsement, 
we think the bones of Cotton Mather, Edwards, Hopkins, 
Tyler, and others of the departed New England Fathers would 
rattle in their graves. 

■ " What is Orthodoxy ? " he asks. " I will tell you. Ortho- 
doxy is my doxy — and Heterodoxy is your doxy, that is if your 
doxy is not like my doxy/ What is terribly and dangerously 
heterodox this year, may be accepted as the very essence of or- 
thodoxy next year. 

"His idea of the true mission of the church and its ministry 
is not to dig among the dead dogmas of the past, or to choke 
his people with the dust from the mummies of a theology which 
might have been good centuries ago, but is now obsolete. But 
rather this, that Christianity, if valuable at all, is only so, when 
applied to the living issues of the day, and that its forms of 
presentation and application must change with advancing civ- 
ilization. As well think of compelling the full grown, brawny 
man, to wear the bands and swaddling clothes of his infancy, 
aud be fed on pap, as to demand that this generation shall be 
restricted to the theologic limits of the centuries which have 
passed into history. Every art, every science, and every pro- 



414 BE UNSETTLED THE FAITH. 

fession have made, and will continue to make rapid strides with 
each succeeding generation, and there is no reason why theol- 
ogy should be an exception. Such are Mr. Beecher's ideas, 
although not expressed in his own words. 

"Mr. Beecher is a better demolisher than builder. He has 
done much to weaken and pull down the old walls of religious 
superstition, and in doing so may not have been very cautious 
in avoiding to pull down and weaken faith in some doctrines 
that were still valuable. Like Theodore Parker and other radi- 
cal demolishers of old and musty creeds, he has not evinced 
much constructive talent, and yet, there can be little question 
that while he has done much to unsettle the faith of thousands 
in the theology of their ancestors, he has at the same time^ ac- 
complished a good work in diffusing more liberal ideas through- 
out the land, and all denominations (perhaps unconsciously) 
have modified and softened not only their beliefs, but their 
manner of teaching them, and few ministers now would dare to 
preach to an intelligent congregation, the doctrines of "Infant 
Damnation '■' and that God the Father had before the foundation 
of the world elected unborn millions to suffer the fiery tortures 
of Eternal Hell. 

"Mr. Beecher's appearance upon the platform of the Lec- 
ture Room is not much different from what i , is in the church. 
There are the same general characteristics, but more abandon 
and a broader humor. His lectures are generally upon Politic- 
al, National or Social topics, and as in his sermons, he is pro- 
fuse in the use of illustrations. He so utterly ignores in his 
dress and manners, the conventionalities of the clergy, that one 
who was ignorant of the fact, would never suspect him of 
belonging to the fraternity. He not only ignores, but most 
heartily despises, the traditional peculiarities and deportment 
so generally adopted by his brethren in the ministry." 

" Once in the course of a lecture he alluded to the severe 
criticisms which had been so freely made by both the secular 
and religious press upon his taking such an active part in po- 



BEEGHER AN ACTOR. 445 

litical affairs, (this was in the winter following the Fremont 
campaign, during which he not only took the stump, but 
preached politics in his church, and sent out his burning sar- 
casms, weekly, through the columns of the Independent). He 
said : — ' Did I when I became a minister cease to be a man and 
a citizen? No! A thousand times no ! Have I not as much 
interest in our government as though I wore a lawyer, a doctor, 
a merchant, a banker, a farmer, a ditch digg j ror a wood saw- 
€ yer ? ' ' Out upon this idea that a minister must dress minis- 
ter, walk minister, talk minister, eat minister, and wear his 
ministerial badge as a convict does his stripes.' 'I have the 
same rights, privileges, and responsibilities as any other citizen, 
and I intend to claim them always and everywhere, and I ask no 
exemptions or privileges on the ground that / am a minister. 9 
In the delivery of the above, his mimickry of the conventional 
minister was one of the finest pieces of comedy acting it lias 
ever been the privilege of the author to witness, and he has 
seen Sothern, Jefferson, Warren, Clarke and nearly all the great 
comedians of the age. Another instance of his wonderful 
power in the use of illustration. 

"He, in the course of a lecture, managed to bring in trout 
fishing ; and he at once threw himself into the attitude of an 
expert angler; he threw his fly, (an imaginary one of course) 
and presently hooked his finny game, and then for five minutes 
(it seemed fifteen) he dodged from one side of the rostrum to 
the other, up and down, giving line and reeling in, until the 
entire audience (nearly two thousand) leaned forward with ex- 
pectant eyes and open mouths, until, finally after many at- 
tempts and feints he landed the speckled beauty, Avhen there 
was a sigh of relief all through the hall, and one particularly 

excited man exclaimed : " By he's got him." Now there 

was no water, no trout, no rod, no line, no fly, and yet there 
was all the excitement there could have been, had the audi- 
ence really seen Seth Green or George Dawson hook and land 
a three pounder. 

" Socially Mr. Beecher is as pleasing and interesting as in his 
public efforts; always genial and hearty, brim full of life and . 
running over with humor, abounds in anecdote, and tells a 



4:16 HE IS FOND OF A JOKE. 

good story, enjoys a hearty laugh after a hearty dinner. His 
fund of magnetism, like the widow's cruse is, never exhausted, 
no matter how frequent or large drafts are made upon it. The 
men admire him, the woman adore him, and the children all 
love him. He is very fond of children and pets of all kinds. 
A good horse is his delight, and he enjoys hugely a ride behind 
one who goes in two and a small fraction, and probably would 
not object, if he had the means, to emulate his friend Bonner 
in his stables, stud and equipage ; and no man is a more ar- 
dent lover of the beautiful in nature. The rocks and rills, the 
vales and hills, woods, brooks and rivers all find in him an en- 
thusiastic worshiper. 

Mr. Beecher's profession never prevents him from having his 
"little joke " for which he has a keen relish. The late T. Starr 
King, (in many respects the most brilliant genius that ever 
adorned the American pulpit, or lecture hall) related the fol- 
lowing characteristic anecdote of Mr. Beecher;' Mr. King, as 
those who have seen him will remember, was a thin, spare man 
with an almost bloodless face, and it seemed a marvel how 
such a frail physical structure could sustain such a colossal 
brain, heart and soul. One cold, winter morning he was walk- 
ing across Boston Common; the east wind was sweeping 
through the mall and walks, and he said it seemed as though 
the very marrow in his bones had turned to ice, his lips were 
blue, and his whole frame shivering, when suddenly a pair of 
strong arms were thrown around him from behind, and he was 
lifted up bodily; turning his head he saw the round, jolly face 
of Mr. Beecher, his cheeks in a ruddy glow, and glistening with 
perspiration. "How is it (asked King) that you are glowing 
with warmth while I am nearly chilled to death ?" "Easily ac- 
counted for, Bro. King," responded Beecher. " What right 
have you who are not orthodox, to expect to have warm blood 
coursing through your veins? It is simply orthodoxy, or the 
lack of it, that makes the difference. You must be orthodox, 
my brother if you want to be warm and vigorous." 

"Mr. Beecher and Rev. E. H. Chapin have for many years 
been warm personal friends, and have been co-workers in the 
temperance cause. Chapin has suffered occasional attacks of 
gout, and has at times been confined for some weeks and suf- 
fered intensely from its effects. During one of his attacks, the 
author called upon him at his house, and found him in his 
easy chair, with his game foot swathed and resting upon a 
cushion in the genuine old aristocratic style. After disposing 



CHA JJNCEY B URR '8 CRITICISM. 417 

of the business which occasioned the visit, a little time was 
spent in familiar chat. " By the way" said Chapin, " Beecher 
was over to see me yesterday, and hit me a goo I one. Ah !" 
said he, " this preaching temperance is all very line, and possi- 
bly may be productive of great good to our fellow creatures, 
but if one wants to enjoy the blessed fruits of temperance in 
his own body, he mn&X. practice as well as preach." 

The above, the author believes, is a just sketch of this great 
divine. In compiling it he has liberally quoted from another 
writer whose views concide so nicely with his own that he has 
felt constrained to use them here. Of course, no attempt is 
here made to sketch Mr. Beecher's eventful career, that alone 
would fill this volume, the only aim being to give sufficient to 
enable the reader with the assistance of the portrait of Ply- 
mouth's pastor, to form an intelligible opinion of him. 

The author cannot resist the temptation to embody here a 
criticism of Mr. Beecher, written in 1868, it is said by Chauncy 
Burr, — not to endorse it, but rather to give the reader the 
opinion of one so well known as Mr. Burr: — ■ 

Of the cleverness of Henry Ward Bjecher, both as a writer 
and speaker, there can be no question. Even in a profession 
for which he is least of all fitted, he has made a sensation, 
partly because of a natural genius which would have given him 
pre-eminence anywhere, and partly because he pressed into its 
practice those tricks which would have given him success in the 
profession for which he was best fitted by nature. He has 
managed in his ministry to mingle the pulpit and the play- 
house as no other man living could have done, and to bring the 
buffoonery of the stage, with a very thin varnish over it, into 
the services of the conventicle. His sermons are always ex- 
ceedingly clever — not as sermons, but as things to amuse and 
entertain an audience. They solve no difficulties of doctrine, 
they remove no doubts of the troubled Christian, they comfort 
no soul anxious to be relieved of its sin, they show no road to 
salvation — for all practical purposes, and with but a few changes 
of words, they might answer for the debating club, the stump, 
or the mock-court of the cider-cellar; but as specimens of word- 
weaving — of words with little original thought, they are almost 
marvellous. And for those who are jaded with novels, and 
surfeited with flash newspapers, it will be pleasant news to 
18* 



41 8 DEITY OF PL 7M0 UTH CHURCH. 

learn that forty-six of Beecher's sermons, revised by the author, 
and considered by him to be his best and wittiest, and least 
tainted with piety, have been issued in two large and handsome 
volumes, and may be placed in the library alongside of the 
Chevalier de Fan bias, and Fredoniad, and be read and enjoyed 
at any time by the lover of light literature. Yet there is a 
slight fault in the compilation. The book is an incongruous 
mixture. After each sermon we have a copy of those public 
instructions to the Almighty, in regard to the latter's conduct 
of affairs, which Mr. Beecher, like a chaplain of Congress, is in 
the habit of giving weekly, in the shape of prayer. That these 
instructions are wise, there can be no doubt. So long as Mr. 
Beecher remains in a state of anxious doubt as to whether he 
did or did not create the Creator, their utterance may be a re- 
lief to the preacher. But why put them in a book? They are 
strictly a private affair between the Almighty and the Deity 
of Plymouth Church, and they occupy space which might have 
been better filled by two or three entertaining and comic ser- 
mons. In a future edition, we hope that Mr. Beecher will cut 
these out, and thus add another to the many favors he has 
conferred upon his devout worshippers. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

SKETCH OF THEODORE TILTON — HIS CAREER AS A REPORTER, 
EDITOR, LECTURER, NOVELIST AND POET — HIS PERSONAL 
APPEARANCE — HIS DEVOTED ADMIRATION OF THE FAIR SEX 
— A MAN WHOSE ADONIS-LIKE APPEARANCE WOULD CARRY 
THE CITADEL OF ANY SUSCEPTIBLE HEART — MR. SAMUEL 
BOWLES' SKETCH OF HIM. 

"IV /TR. TILTON occupies the second place in importance in 
-L»-L this work, and we shall do no more than endeavor to 
give a hurried sketch of his career and labors since attaining 
his majority. It may be said, however, that he was educated 
in the public schools of New York, selected the journalistic 
profession became a stenographer and general reporter on the 
Tribune, was a protege of Horace Greeley, and finally rose 
through all the grades of journalism until he became editor of 
the Brooklyn Union and the Independent, in the service of 
Henry 0. Bowen. 

"His personal appearance, says a gifted biographer, is almost 
remarkable. Nature must have been in a kindly mood when 
she arranged the mould in which the physical Theodore Tilton 
was cast; and his mental abilities and characteristics are in 
sweet accord with his physical symmetry. Mr. Tilton is em- 
phatically what Trowbridge's "Vagabond" said he was in his 
early manhood, " One of your handsome men." 

He is rather tall, neither slim, nor stout, but of elegant form 
and proportion. His hair (worn long) is in color between a 
brown and auburn, and is inclined to curl, is always neatly ar- 
ranged, and combed back, hanging in heavy masses over his 
collar. His eyes are very expressive, piercing, yet with an al- 

419 



420 BOWLES' SKETCH OF THEODORE. 

most dove-like softness and tenderness. His features come 
nearer to the pure Grecian type than any American whom we 
have met; always cleanly shaved, his dress faultlessly neat, rich 
and becoming, and his linen immaculate in its whiteness. In 
fact his whole appearance would indicate that he fully accepted 
the truth of the proverb that " cleanliness is akin to Godliness." 
The reader may think we are drawing the portrait of a perfect 
Adonis; and perhaps we may as well admit it, for we have rarely, 
if ever, met a man who approximates so nearly to our standard 
of the ideal Adonis, as does Theodore Tilton; and we should 
think that any woman of sentiment and refinement would not 
only admire him, but fall in love with him. Socially, he is not 
only interesting, but fascinating; almost irresistible; always the 
refined gentleman ; a first class conversationalist, and an 
evening spent with him, listening to his converse, or hearing 
him read poetry, with his soft, rich voice, is something to re- 
member with pleasurable emotion; and yet he is a radical of 
the most ultra type. 

" Mr. Tilton is about thirty-seven years of age, and has during 
his whole manhood life, been connected with Journalism. In 
his early career as a journalist, he was a stenographer and re- 
porter, but he first became prominently known to the public 
through his connection with the Independent, of which he was 
for several years the responsible, managing editor, and in his 
editorials, no one can gainsay that he Avas in all respects what 
the title of that paper indicates, for he was emphatically inde- 
pendent in the full significance of that word. In his expres- 
sions of his views, political, social or religious, he as utterly 
ignored the old beaten tracks and long accepted formulas, as 
did his pastor, Mr. Beecher, in his ministrations at Plymouth 
Church. As a radical he fairly out-distanced those who had 
been pioneers in the cause before he had ever written a para- 
graph. 

" The Independent, as the reader is aware, was started as a 
professedly religious publication, but has really been quite as 
much devoted to political, social and commercial interests as to 
purely religious topics, and under the management of Mr. 
Tilton, politics seemed to be the dominant feature in that sheet; 
and while Mr. Tilton was professedly a republican, he never 
hesitated to score any leader in that party who failed to come 
up to his ideas of the true mission of radical republicanism. 
He was, prior to the act of emancipation, a most ultra and un- 
compromising advocate of freedom for all, and as soon as the 



A LORD OF CREATION. 421 

abolition of slavery had become a fixed fact lie turned his artil- 
lery upon the real or supposed wrongs of woman, and the 
columns of his paper fairly teemed with appeals and arguments 
in behalf of woman's rights, and female suffrage, and we 
question if the cause has ever had a more enthusiastic advocate 
among the " Lords of creation " than Theodore Tilton. He 
not only wrote for it, but spoke for it; and was sneered at and 
made the target for all sorts of ridicule by the conservative 
press the country through. 

"From the initiatory of woman's rights and female suffrage, 
to the extreme and revolutionary social-freedom platform of 
Mrs. Woodhull and her disciples, the road was an easy and 
natural one, and Mr. Tilton was ere long found standing side 
by side with her, and openly indorsing her particular doctrines. 
Thus we find him November 20th, 1871, at Steinway Hall, 
New York city, presiding at an immense meeting, and intro- 
ducing Mrs. Woodhull to the audience before whom she de- 
livered her celebrated speech defining for the first time publicly 
the principles of social freedom as held by her; and whatever 
may be his position now, the part he assumed then was virtually 
a public indorsement of, and declaration of adhesion to, the 
bold platform launched on the waves of public opinion on that 
occasion. He also wrote (or allowed his name to go forth to 
the public as the author of) a biography of Mrs. Woodhull, and 
eulogized her as one of the purest women on.earth ; and she at 
that time, no doubt, counted upon him, as one who would stand 
in the front rank as an advocate and exemplar of her social doc- 
trines, and as a founder and sustainer of the Utopia, to the 
establishment of which she had pledged her " fortune," her 
"life" and her "sacred honor." 

After his dismissal from the service of Mr. Bowen, Mr. Til- 
ton founded the Golden Age which supplied a new field for the 
journalist. The Age took very radical and independent ground 
on all public questions, and when the Liberal Eepublican move- 
ment was inaugurated Tilton was one of its most earnest sup- 
porters, throwing his pen and voice into the campaign in sup- 
port of its principles and Horace Greeley. A few weeks ago 
he temporarily retired from the Age but still owns it. 

As a lecturer Theodore was no less brilliant than as a jour- 
nalist. Though not so popular on the rostrum as Beecher, 



422 " TEMPEST TOSSED." 

he was decidedly attractive, and rarely did he fail to secure 
crowded houses when announced to appear. As a delyer in 
the field of fiction he has won success in his first effort, and his 
book "Tempest Tossed ".shows that many of the characters 
are ably drawn. Indeed, it is as a novel admitted to be supe- 
rior to Beecher's " Norwood." " Mary Vail," one of the charac- 
ters in " Tempest Tossed," it is admitted, represents Mrs. Til- 
ton. "We regret that we have not space to quote from the work 
in this connection. As a poet Mr. Tilton has shown consider- 
able genius. Two of the most noted ones are "Sir Marma- 
duke's Musings," given elsewhere, and " A Faith Confession." 
The latter is as follows: — ■ 

As other men have creeds, so I have mine; 
I keep the holy faith in God, in man, 
And in the angels mrnistrant between. 

I hold to one true church of all true souls ; 
Whose churchly seal is neither bread nor wine, 
Nor laying on of hands, nor holy oil, 
But only the anointing of God's grace. 

I hate all kings, and caste, and rank of birth; 
For all the sons of men are sons of God ; 
Nor limps a beggar but is nobly born ; 
Nor wears a slave a yoke, nor Czar a crown, 
That makes him less or more than just a man. 

I love my country and her righteous cause : 

So dare I not keep silent of her sin ; 

And after Freedom, may her bells ring Peace ! 

I love one woman with a holy fire, 

Whom I revere as priestess of my house ; 

I stand with wondering awe before my babes, 

Till they rebuke me to a nobler life ; 

I keep a faithful friendship with my friend, 

Whom loyally I serve before myself; 

I lock my lips too close to speak a lie ; 

I wash my hands too white to touch a bribe ; 

I owe no man a debt I cannot pay — 

Except the love that man should always owe. 



HE IS A POET. 423 

Withal, each day, before the blessed Heaven, 
I open wide the chambers of my soul, 
And pray the Holy Ghost to enter in. 

Thus reads the fair confession of my faith, 
So crossed with contradictions by my life, 
That now may God forgive the written lie ! 
Yet still, by help of him, who helpeth men, 
I face two worlds, and fear not life nor death! 
O Father ! lead me by Thy hand ! Amen. 

The course he has seen fit to pursue in regard to the scandal 
which so deeply affects his domestic relations, has been vari- 
ously commented upon ; his reticence for years, has been se- 
verely condemned by some of his friends, and as heartily com- 
mended by others. Whether he has acted wisely or not, is 
neither the purpose or province of the writer to attempt to de- 
cide. 

One thing, however, is certainly very sure, and that is, he 
deeply regrets his association with, and frequent public in- 
dorsement of the champions of free love, and social revolution, 
and has doubtless found it as dangerous an occupation as hold- 
ing a wolf by the ears, neither safe to hold on or let go. The 
details of his experience in this character will hereinafter more 
fully appear. 

The author while preparing this imperfect sketch of Mr. 
Tilton, found in the Springfield {Massachusetts) Republican, 
edited by Mr. Samuel Bowles, who has long known Mr. Til- 
ton, the following article : — 

Forty years ago, this summer, young Henry W. Beecher 
graduated from Amherst college. The next year, was born 
Theodore Tilton in New York city. People yet in their youth 
may remember the brilliancy of Tilton's debut. In the ten 
years succeeding the attainment of his majority, he worked up- 
on the Independent, and became the idol and the weekly teach- 
er of a vast constituency of readers. He was young, hand- 
some and full of heart. He had the physique of the natural 
man and a head and face like Goethe's in that bust of him in 



4:24: BE UNDERTOOK TO SAVE. 

his youth, and such as a pagan would have called god-like. 
He was a man of impulses and affections no less ardent and 
broad than Mr. Beecher's, and in his writing he added to these 
a style trenchant and vigorous. He loved humanity in the ab- 
stract and he loved it in his friends having lor his intimates 
even of his own sex a fraternal embrace that smacked of the 
Gallic habit. He was a man whose heart was great, and it was 
a time when heart Avas needed. It was a time when dormant 
natures had to be roused, when the discouraged and the wearv 
had to be nerved again to the conflict. It was no time for logic, 
but for battle, and we all pressed on, grateful for any impetus, 
impatient of reason. In the great anti-slavery war, Theodore 
Tilton did his share. 

After the war, we fell upon times which demanded consider- 
able cold calculation, and we slid back into the old materialis- 
tic " horse-sense " ways of looking at things. Our Donateilo, 
(for he strongly reminds us of Hawthorne's "Marble Faun"), 
seemed out of place with his sentiment, which by that time we 
had come to call gush. In our cynical mood, he seemed an 
overgrown boy rather than a mature man. Spoiled by the flat- 
teries that had been heaped upon him and soured by business 
disappointments, we see him at length plunged into a domes- 
tic difficulty of an appalling character. A Sickles would have 
shot the supposed intruder, a selfish man would have settled 
it " for a consideration," but Tilton forgave. He undertook to 
save his wife and Mr. Beecher ; the smart became too sore, and 
he sought advice, and little by little he proved quite inadequate 
in cunning to carry out the plan which his heart dictated. 



CHAPTER XX. 

SKETCH OF MRS. THEODORE TILTON nee ELIZABETH RICHARDS. 
— HER DEEPLY RELIGIOUS TURN" OF MIND. — THE DELICATE 
COMPLIMENTS PAID HER BY THE HUSBAND WHO CHARGES 
HER WITH A GREAT SIN. 

A \ J ITHOUT some facts descriptive of the above named 
* * lady — who in this disgraceful and nauseating scandal, 
has certainly suffered more acute anguish than any of the par- 
ties to it; yet who we are told, has maintained a calmness such 
as only women in affliction know how — this volume wculd be 
very incomplete. The author has never met her, and must 
depend upon those who have, for a biographical and personal 
sketch. He will, therefore, be excused for extracting from the 
writings of others. The Daily Graphic in describing her 
remarks : — 

" Mrs. Elizabeth E. Tilton, whose name has become unfor- 
tunately conspicuous in connection with the great Brooklyn 
Scandal, is a lady of about forty years of age. She is under 
medium height, with black hair and eyes, a face that is inter- 
esting though not beautiful, with an expression that indicates 
unusual sensibility and sentimentality rather than intellectual 
force or refinement. Her appearance is modest and her air 
peculiarly sincere and confiding. Her manners are easy and 
natural, with a simple grace which is more pleasing: than what 
passes for elegance in polite society. Her prevailing mood is 
profoundly serious, lit up with occasional gleams of joy and 
sometimes breaking into a beautiful playfulness. At times, 
when her feelings are pleasantly excited and her face glows 
with expression, she appears really handsome; at other times, 

425 



426 MBS. TILTON'S LIFE. 

when depressed or wearied or unexcited, her eye is lustreless 
and her face is dull and unattractive. She is a good house- 
keeper and an excellent mother, devotedly fond of her children, 
and doing more for them and spending more time in reading 
to them and talking with them than most mothers. Her 
tastes and habits are domestic, sentimental, and religious 
rather than aesthetic or literary; her reading has not been 
"extensive, and her favorite pictures are valuable for their sen- 
timent rather than artistic excellence or imaginative power. 
She has had seven children, four of whom are living. The 
eldest is a daughter of more than ordinary maturity of mind 
and force of character. She resembles her father much more 
than the other children — so much that she would be recognized 
as his daughter by those who are familiar with his features. 
Her home, on Livingston Street, was once peculiarly attractive 
and charming by affection that filled its rooms with a climate 
of summer and a fragrance as of blooming roses; it was taste- 
fully furnished, graced with exquisite pictures, made poetic by 
the disposition and arrangement of its contents, and the ideal 
element visible and palpable in every apartment. It seemed 
to realize the ideal of home. 

" Of Mrs. Tilton's married life it is obviously indelicate and 
unbecoming to say much. She was natnrally religious, and 
united with the church when young and had a class in the 
Sunday-school. She was attached to all persons of a religious 
cast of mind, and particularly friendly to her pastor, to whom 
she seems to have gone for counsel, and on whom she leaned 
perhaps more than was well for either. The last evidence of 
her religious sincerity is furnished by the fact that her husband 
has defended her so long, and by his emphatic statements be- 
fore the committee. If she has sinned, he contends, that was 
through the blinding of her conscience and the misleading of 
her mind, and he acquits her of guilt while he accuses her of 
crime. ' I have taken pains to say that she was a devoted 
Christian woman,' said Mr. Tilton on examination; 'a tender, 
delicate, kindly Christian woman. Her's is one of the white 
souls.' 

" * There are a great many women who look upon a man 
with a sense of worship; Elizabeth never did that; Elizabeth 
is the peer of any man ; at the same time she reverences; it 
was not vanity — it was reverence; she never regarded Mr. 
Beecher as a silly woman regards him ; she was not a silly 
woman taken captive; she was a wise, good woman taken cap- 



SHE WAS VERT RELIGIOUS. 427 

tive. Elizabeth was in a sort of vaporous-like cloud. She 
was between light and dark. She could not see that it was 
wrong. She maintained to her mother in my presence that 
she had not done wrong; she cannot bear to do wrong; a sense 
of having done wrong is enough to crush her; she naturally 
seeks for her own peace a conscientious verdict; she never 
would have had these relations if she had supposed at the time 
that they were wrong; Elizabeth never does anything that at 
the time seems wrong; for such a large moral nature, there is 
a lack of a certain balance and equipoise; she has not a will 
that guides and restrains; but Elizabeth never does at any time 
that which does not have the stamp of her conscience at the 
time upon it. I think she certainly spends hours on her 
knees some days; I don't suppose a day passes over Elizabeth 
that the sun, if he could peep through the windows, would not 
see her on her knees.' " 

" Testimony like this," says the Graphic, "from an accusing 
husband invests the character of the wife with peculiar inter- 
est, if not with mystery. It is hard for a majority of people to 
comprehend such complexity. But it is not difficult to see 
that such a woman as he has described, could hardly enjoy his 
eccentricities of belief, his intimate relations with reformers of 
all kinds, his severe criticisms of the church she regarded as so 
sacred. She naturally recoiled from much that he loved, and 
wanted to hide her face from the pictures he hung on the 
wall. His friends she looked upon as the foes of religion, and 
the more firmly he set his face towards freedom the more res- 
olutely she hid hers in the tradition of her childhood. He 
says: ' She would not let the children have playthings on Sun- 
day. John G. Whittier came to our house one Sunday night, 
and Mr. Greeley, and met Mr. Johnson ; and it almost broke 
Elizabeth's heart to think that the best man in New England, 
whom she reverenced, should have appointed Sunday night; 
she never received visitors on Sunday." His change of re- 
ligious views "was a great source of tears and anguish to her ; 
she said to me once that denying the divinity of Christ in her 
view nullified our marriage almost; and I think next to the 
sorrow of this scandal it has caused that woman to sorrow more 
than anything else ; she has suffered because I cannot look 
upon the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord God; I think her 
breast has been wrenched with it." 

Whether this lady be guilty or innocent of the damaging 
charges alleged against her, every womanly heart must admire 



428 THEODORE STILL LO VE8 HER. 

the delicate manner in which the author of those charges 
speaks of her. It is evident that Theodore Tilton still loves 
her as he loves his God, or he would never have resorted to 
such subterfuges as he did to shield her reputation. Another 
writer thus pictures her : 

"A most dominating wealth of silken brown hair; soft and 
soulful eyes of richest hazel; a face of exquisite sweetness and 
tenderness, and ripe with culture and character; a mouth 
carved by the gods, and lips full, warm and suggesting robust- 
ness of modest passion; a chin indicating a gentle, firm and 
abundant will; a shapely neck and graceful shoulders, and a 
finely developed bust— all harmony; all beauty; all the vigor 
and tenderness of young life and fascination. The witching 
eyes seemed to brighten when looked into; a smile so very 
sweet as to thrill me appeared upon that face when I involun- 
tarily fixed my gaze upon it." 

Of her early life there is little to say. In early life she re- 
sided with her widowed mother in New York. The family 
subsequently removed to Brooklyn, where she attended several 
private schools, and finally completed her education at the 
Packer Institute, which is more noted for the superiority of the 
education imparted, than for the inculcation of religious prin- 
ciples. Of these times a recent writer says : — 

" She was a strangely earnest little brunette, that inspired 
the kindest regards in her teachers, and a kind of awe in her 
schoolmates. She graduated at the age of eighteen, and at 
once came to the aid of her mother, who was then keeping a 
boarding house on Livingston street, a little below the pleasant 
frame cottage where she so lately lived, with the same energy 
and self-devotion that she had displayed in conquering her 
school tasks. It was here that she met Mr. Tilton. He was a 
protege of Mr. Beecher, and hence came to her with the best of 
earthly recommendations. Mr. Beecher had known her from 
a child. She had sat upon his knee ; and when she at last be- 
came acquainted with the tall, handsome, enthusiastic young 
writer, wiio carried his indorsement, she was not disinclined to 
receive his attentions. He became a boarder at her mother's 
house. When she was twenty-two years old they were married. 
This was in 1855. Her life now became wholly domestic, a 
part of it devoted to her three children, and the remainder to 
the supervision of a large and fashionable boarding house." 



CHAPTER XXL 

SKETCH OF MRS. VICTORIA CLAELIN WOODHULL — HER PERSONAL 
APPEARANCE — A GLANCE AT HER PECULIAR SOCIAL THEO- 
RIES — A DANGEROUS ANTAGONIST, EITHER IN CONVERSATION 
OR AS A WRITER. 

TITER late devoted admirer having reserved so much space to a 
J — *- sketch of this remarkable woman's early trials, victories and 
misfortunes, extracts from which we give elsewhere, it is hardly- 
necessary for us to say much in addition. She is now about 
thirty-six years of age, is of medium height, has a good form, 
erect and firm in her carriage ; her features are regular and of 
the aquiline type; eyes dark blue and very expressive, and when 
in speaking she gets thoroughly roused, they are flashingly 
eloquent. She is rather inclined to paleness, except when ex- 
cited in conversation or speaking to an audience there comes a 
flush upon her cheeks which is of the hectic order; her hair, 
which is a light brown, is worn short and carelessly arranged; 
her forehead is high and broad, and her whole head and face 
indicate more than ordinary intellectuality and mental power. 
When not engaged in speaking she has a sad and decidedly 
thoughtful expression, and in her general appearance what the 
French term spirituelle. There is nothing masculine or sensual 
in her looks, and if she is the sensual, depraved woman that 
she is charged withal, her whole physiognomy is a glaring lie. 
Her manners are refined and lady-like. When strangers are 
presented to her, she greets them with a winning cordiality 
which at once sets them at ease ; she is a good conversationalist, 

429 



430 VICTORIA AS AJSf- ORATOR. 

and never wearies one with worn out platitudes, but is original 
in her modes of expression, every now and then startling her 
auditors with some bold and novel proposition. She is apt to 
call things by their right names, speaks out boldly what she 
thinks, and we should infer that she had adopttd as her own, 
the motto of the Knight of the Garter. A close observer 
spending an hour in her company, and witnessing her greet- 
ings to one and another, speaking briefly to a half dozen dif- 
ferent persons, and perhaps on as many different topics, will 
readily understand the secret of her wonderful power over both 
men and women. We do not wonder that so many love her, 
and others' fear her, for no one can long be placed within the 
charmed circle of her presence and remain insensible to the 
almost irresistible power of her fascinations. But it is on the 
platform that her particular talents are most vividly exhibited. 

As a rule, female decluimers are not a success, and Mrs. 
"Woodhull is not altogether an exception to the rule, and yet 
there is a something about her that will notonly attract, but hold 
an audience; she is a radical of the radicals, and boldly, nay, 
defiantly launches forth her most ultra and advanced doctrines 
of free love, and, as we think, ofter shocks her hearers by 
preaching extremes of social and sexual freedom. 

She has a pleasant voice, and ordinarily speaks with delibera- 
tion, enunciating clearly and distinctly; is at times quite log- 
ical, but often mistakes sophistry for logic. She appears best 
when she is broken up in her discourse by hisses, or other un- 
complimentary interruptions; they seem to evoke-all the latent 
powers of her whole nature, and leaving her desk and manu- 
script, she pours forth a perfect torrent of fiery eloquence, 
freely using (and effectively too) invective, sarcasm, or ridicule, 
as the occasion demands; she is never at a loss for a ready and 
apt retort on such occasions. Her pereorations at the close of 
a long and carefully written speech, seem to be impromptu, and 
the ideas, and words wherewithal to clothe them, to come from 
the inspiration of the moment; and even an unbeliever in 



" BELO W THE BELT." 431 

Spiritualism can almost believe that what she claims is really 
true; that she is controlled and guided by the spirit of Demos- 
thenes, who, as she says, has for years been her special guar- 
dian, and that she not only draws her inspiration from him, but 
also many of her ideas and expressions; she most assuredly has 
all the appearance of one so wholly rapt and absorbed by some 
invisible influence as to be hardly conscious of her own identity. 
She is very pointed and often personal in her speeches; and to 
use a pugilistic simile, "hits from the shoulder" and has no 
hesitation in hitting "below the belt." She is merciless; 
sparing neither friend or foe; truth, as she claims, is what she 
is seeking, no matter where it may lead, or how many previously 
accepted opinions, or former friends and associates are sacrificed. 
Nothing is sacred or inviolate with her, if it stand in the way 
she has marked out. She says "wherever I find a social car- 
buncle I shall plunge my surgical knife of reform into it, up to 
the hill" As it regards consequences personal to herself, she 
declares she never takes them into the account; she may be 
shut up in prison, or even led to the stake, but she will not turn 
one hair's bread? h to the right or left from the course marked 
out for her by her own conscience, and the teachings of her 
guardian spirit. In a speech in Chicago she said, " I am charged 
with seeking notoriety, but who among you would accept any 
notoriety and pay a tithe of its cost to me? Driven from my 
former beautiful home, reduced from affluence to want, my 
business broken up and destroyed, dragged from one jail to an- 
other, and in a short time am again to be arraigned before the 
courts and stand trial for telling the truth. I have been 
smeared all over with the most opprobrious epithets, and the 
vilest names, am stigmatized as a bawd and a blackmailer. 
Now until you are ready to accept my notoriety, with its con- 
ditions — to suffer what I have suffered and am yet to suffer — 
do not dare to impugn my motives ; as to your approval or dis- 
sent, your applause or your curses, they have not a feather's 
weight with me, I am set apart for a high and sacred duty, and 
I shall perform it without fear or favor," 



432 FINANCIAL QUESTION. 

As a writer she wields a caustic and eloquent pen, and es- 
pecially does she shine as such in responding to an attack upon 
her. Whenever she "strikes back" her blows fall with telling 
effect upon her adversaries, who are invariably carried off 
wounded. She has written much upon the financial questions 
agitating the country from time to time, and wrote so well that 
many of her essays were honored with a place in the New York 
Herald. One of her best known works is " The Principles of 
Government. " Her social theories are most revolting and find 
but few indorsers, for their adoption would sap the foundations 
of domestic life, and bring man down to the status of the 
brute creation. 




COL. BLOOD. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

SKETCH OF COL. JOHN" H. BLOOD. — THE " BREVET " HUSBAND 
OF VICTORIA WOODHULL. — WHAT MRS. WOODHULL SAYS OF 
HIM. 

rpiIIS man was originally, we believe, from Missouri. Dur- 
-*- ing the war he held the rank of Colonel of a Missouri reg- 
iment. He was at one time one of the leading spiritualists of 
St. Louis, and for some time filled a responsible government 
office ; there he was married, but secured a divorce that he 
might marry " the Woodhull." 

Col. Blood is about thirty-seven years of age, rather below 
the average height, and, as will be seen by his portrait, rather 
good looking. His hair is a dark brown, and his face is adorned 
with a heavy mustache, and side whiskers approximating in 
length the Dundreary style. He has a pleasing countenance, 
and is a good talker, has a pleasant voice, but rarely speaks in 
public. When making an announcement, or speaking a few 
words upon any subject under discussion, he impresses one as 
having clear ideas, and at least a fair capacity for expressing 
them, and is in appearance what would be generally termed a 
" good fellow." It has been said, and is by many believed that 
he is the " power behind the throne," or the " Warwick " of the 
Woodhull kingdom, and that he writes the speeches, editorials, 
etc., of Victoria and Tennie. But we have personal assurance 
that such a suspicion is not well founded. This however is a 
matter of opinion rather than knowledge. But we do believe 
19 433 



434: MRS. WOODHULL'S LOVER. 

him to be a valuable, and important spoke in the business 
wheel of the firm. 

In regard to his peculiar relations with Mrs. Woodhull, no 
better authority can be quoted than that of Mrs. Woodhull, 
who in a speech, at Vineland, New Jersey, a few years ago, 
(pointing to Col. Blood,) exclaimed : " There stands my lover, 
but when I cease to love him, 1 shall leave him; yet I hope that 
time will never come." 




TESN1E C. CLAJb'LIN. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

SKETCH OF TENNIE C. CLAFLIN". — HER PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 
— THE BUSINESS "MAN" OF THE BROKERAGE FIRM. — EX- 
TRACTS FROM HER WRITINGS. — HER POWER AS A CLAIRVOY- 
ANT, AND A REMARKABLE TEST OF IT. 

*TT7~E propose to say but little of Miss Tenuie 0. Claflin, as 
* » she has not figured very prominently in connection 
with the charges. Nevertheless her life has been so intimately 
entwined with that of Victoria, that an attachment has grown 
up between them that is lasting. In Mr. Tilton's Life of 
Woodhull, Tennie's career is sketched, but we will give a few 
facts regarding her in this chapter. In her youth she was a 
clairvoyant and so-called medium, as was also her sisters Vic- 
toria and Mary (Mrs. Dr. Spar). Tennie is about twenty-nine 
years of age, is quite handsome, compared with the other sis- 
ters, and is rather below medium height, and while she is not 
stout, she has a plump, well-rounded form, and in both form 
and features singularly free from anything approximating to 
angularities; her complexion is light, almost to paleness, and 
her skin is fair as that of an infant ; hair, light brown, worn 
short, and inclined to curl ; eyes blue, sparkling, and very ex- 
pressive. When engaged in conversation upon any topic which 
interests her, she is all animation ; talking not only with her 
tongue, but with eyes, face, hands, and all over; and one would 
think her whole physical structure was inlaid with a thousand 
sensitive spiral springs. She is all nerve and vivacity ; full of 
magnetism and excitability, very free in her modes of expres- 
sion, and seemingly never stops to think how any sentence is 
going to sound to another, or that by her careless freedom she 
is liable to be misapprehended, and notwithstanding she has 
since her girlhood been much around the world, and has 

435 



436 SAUCE FOR GOOSE, ETC. 

mingled largely and freely with men of the world, she will say 
and do the most outre things, but with an air of the most child- 
like and unsophisticated innocence. 

" Her face " says a writer, " does not wear the sad expression 
of her sister, nor is it like hers sicklied o'er with the pale cast 
of thought." We should judge that as a broker she would be 
"of more service to the firm as a drummer up of business, and 
in entertaining patrons, than in attending to details which 
require patience and consecutive thought, and that as one of 
the late stock brokerage firm of Woodhull & Claflin, Tennie 
was the Jim Fisk and Victoria the Jay Gould ; and as pub- 
lishers of the Weekly Victoria's sphere was the editorial sanc- 
tum and Tennie's that of outside business man I to get sub- 
scribers and secure paying advertisements. Like her sister 
she is an ardent spiritualist, and sees visions, and dreams 
dreams , both developing a strong hereditary superstition of 
this peculiar form. Tennie sometimes is heard upon the plat- 
form as a speaker, and while quite as enthusiastic as her sister, 
is not as argumentative or effective. She also wields a ready 
pen, and has issued quite a large book under the title of " Con- 
stitutional Equality of the Sexes." She has also written more 
or less for the Weekly, and has given to the public through its 
columns free utterance to her free social theories; her strong- 
est points however are made on the subject of the social equal- 
ity or the sexes — maintaining that if the woman who violates 
the laws of social purity is ostracised by society, her male part- 
ner in guilt should suffer the same penalty, or if the libertine 
and seducer be received into, and petted by society, his female 
victim be equally well received — that if female chastity be the 
condition of social recognition, the same condition be inexora- 
bly required of the man ; that if Hester Pryne be compelled 
to wear the " scarlet letter " in the market place, her reverend 
seducer shall stand by her side, wearing the same red insignia 
of shame ; or to use an old and trite maxim, " Sauce for goose, 
sauce for gander." 

While it is not our intention to give endorsement in any 
manner to the peculiar views of Miss Claflin, we will make 
some extracts from her published writings that the reader may 
see the advanced views on social questions: 

"Whatever may be your ideas as to whether individuals 
should, or should not, be permitted to think upon social free- 



TENNIE'S DOCTRINE. 437 

dom, and to advocate their views regarding it, none of you 
will, I dare say, presume to deny my sister and myself the 
right to advocate whatever religious views we may hold; and 
I further presume you will not object to our changing those 
views (at any time) according to any new light that may shine 
upon us. 

" Herein, I shall not hesitate to say that in religion we are 
most thorough, and I trust devout spiritualists; and that 
whether we are deceived, insane, or whatever else may be con- 
ceived of, all our movements are largely the result of spirit in- 
fluence, and often of positive direction. And we arc proud to 
proclaim at all times and in all places that we yield willing 
obedience to all such requirements, because through a long- 
scries of years we have learned from frequent trial to trust 
them. 

" We know, as well as any of you know what you are en- 
gaged in, that we are engaged in introducing new social views 
to the notice/and for the consideration of the general public ; 
and that these views look to radical and sweeping changes in 
the present system, which everybody knows must be changed 
before anything like the millenium, in which all Christians 
pretend to believe, can be realized. Step by step we have been 
led on, from one thing to another, sometimes ourselves even, 
fearing the results which might come, but ever being justified 
by what has come, until we now stand on the very brink of 
what we know, is to be a social earthquake. What this earth- 
quake may destroy, who may be swallowed up in its yawning 
chasm, or whether we ourselves may be swept away, we do not 
know; but that great good to the human family will come of 
it, we feel assured. Our course has not always brought us 
peace, happiness and comfort ; on the contrary we have suf- 
fered almost all the terrors to which human life is subject. 
Even now we stand under two criminal indictments, upon both 
of which, if present public opinion, under the manipulations 
of the church and press, could have its way, whether accord- 
ing to law we are, or are not guilty, we should be so adjudged ; 
yet we rely upon truth as against all other powers that may be 
conjured up to oppose it, and we know that it shall triumph, 
even if we are crushed in the process. 

"You must remember that many, if not most of you, to- 
day worship One, who in doing His duty to His Father, died 
upon the cross. None of you imagine that it was a pleasant 
duty He performed in thus yielding up His life. He did not 



438 DOES WHAT SITE BELIEVES BIGHT. 

live selfishly for Himself, as I fear most of those who profess 
Him so loudly, live for themselves. He was despised of the au- 
thorities in government, in philosophy and in religion. His 
associates were Magdalens, sinners and lowly fishermen; and 
yet you now exalt Him to the throne of the Universe, and 
pretend iveekly at least, to bow in homage before His shrine. 

" I would not have it understood from this reference that my 
sister and I presume to place ourselves as Christs of the pres- 
ent generation. On the contrary we wish it to be distinctly 
understood, that we lay claim to nothing, except this : that 
without fear or favor, we do what we believe to be right to do ; 
that we live the life which is the best we can live, and which 
we are willing the whole world shall know, and that we obey 
the directions of those whom we know to be wiser than we are. 
Again I say you may credit us with insanity, if you will ; but I 
pray you, along with it, to also give us credit for honesty of 
purpose. 

" It has been freely circulated through the press, that we are 
simply notoriety seekers. Now let me ask you to consider 
calmly fur a moment the probabilities of such a thing. Ho 
people usually invoke upon themselves continuous persecution, 
merely to obtain notoriety? Do they consciously invoke the 
terrible power of the press to crush them, to brand them be- 
fore the world by every vile and detestable epithet known to 
language ; do they seek the hoots and jeers of the common 
multitudes, and the sneers, and upturned noses of the select 
few wherever they go ; do they purposely, render themselves 
friendless, and homeless and distressed in all possible and con- 
ceivable ways merely to become simply notorious? Nay, my 
friends ! none of you can honestly any you believe this. It re- 
quires stern convictions of duty; unflinching allegiance to 
purposes; undying devotion to principles, and an unswerving 
faith to enable any one, and especially frail women, to endure 
unto the end und-r all these trials. 

* * * * ****** 

"If one half that had been charged against us, had even a 
shadow of foundation in fact, we should have been long ere 
this, and justly too, in the Penitentiary. 

"Early in this course, which has been marked out to us, we 
sometimes almost fainted by the way-side. It was almost a 
greater sorrow than we could endure, to see the whole public 
press teeming with the most outrageous and debasing items 



THROUGH STORM AND SUNSHINE. 439 

about ns. Every woman knows what it requires to endure even 
the shadow of a reflection upon her private social life, to say 
nothing about sweeping charges, destroying in the minds of 
those, who from them alone, gather their information, and 
form their conclusions, every sentiment of respect, and making 
room for utter detestation and hate. 

"It 1ms been said that we are utterly insensible to these 
things ; but if the public knew what it has cost us in sleepless 
nights, in heart-aches and laceration of soul, to be able to per- 
form our duties, under the heavy hand, that has at times been 
laid upon us, you would wonder, not that we have maintained 
ourselves, but that we could ever presume to think of living 
at all. 

"There are thousands upon thousands in this country, who 
hate us with the most inveterate hatred ; who think us the per- 
sonification of every thing that is bad, who honestly believe 
that no fate could be too cruel for us to endure, and yet not 
one of these people, of their own knowledge, know a single fact 
to justify their convictions. 

**** *** **# 

" Man proposes, but God disposes ; and we are very willing 
to act our part as best we may, and trust the rest to Him who 
'maketh even the wrath of man to praise Him.' We have 
cast ourselves into the gap broken in social despotism, and 
there we shall stand firmly and proudly, until the war shall be 
ended and the victory secured, even if it brings death to us. 
And I say here and now : We shall be justified ! 

" Thus through storm and sunshine alike, we have steadfast- 
ly pursued our way, halting at nothing, but shoulder to shoul- 
der, battling together, for what we believe to be the right and 
the truth." 

Miss Claflin was once married, but secured a divorce. For 
several years she lived in the West and followed, under the 
name of Tennessee Clallin, the calling of clairvoyant and medi- 
um, and the files of the Cincinnati papers in 1864 will exhibit 
her card. The author has never placed any faith in the powers 
of clairvoyants; but there is certainly possessed by this young 
woman some power of sight-seeing that he cannot explain, 
and he proposes to give an instance of it here. After the bat- 



44:0 THE A UTHOR TEUNDEBSTR UGK. 

tie of Eesacca, Ga., in 1864, while examining the deserted rebel 
works, the author was shot in the foot by a concealed rebel, 
who had remained hid in the woods and desired to test his 
musket before surrendering to the " Yanks/' He went back 
to Cincinnati to recuperate from the wound. While at the 
hotel he became restless and wearied by confinement, and asked 
the clerk where he could go to pass an hour pleasantly. A 
visit to Tennessee Claflin, the seeress, was recommended. Call- 
ing a coach he was soon put down at her door and "hobbled 
in on crutches." After receiving her fee, the fair seeress told 
him much in his past life that he knew to be true and only 
known to himself; but the most remarkable statement was 
this: 

" Why, Captain," said she, " you were not wounded in battle/' 

" How then did I receive it ? " he asked in great astonish- 
ment. 

"When the rebels evacuated their works and the Federal 
army moved forward in pursuit, you lingered behind to look at 
the works and was shot by a rebel concealed in a tree." 

The author was thunderstruck. This woman at Cincinnati, 
two weeks after the battle, had correctly described an event 
certainly only known to him and the concealed rebel who drew 
his "bead" upon him that morning. This is mentioned here 
merely as proof that the woman has some means of "guessing'* 
correctly. The author has never spoken to her since that day 
in 1864, but has frequently seen her in the metropolis dodging 
into brokers' offices and newspaper sanctuaries, and discovered 
in that vivacious little creature " Tennessee Claflih, the Cin- 
cinnati Clairvoyant/' 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

HENRY C. BOWEN, HIS MERCANTILE CAREER AS THE SENIOR MEM- 
BER OF THE FIRM OF BOWEN, MCNAMEE & CO. HIS CAREER AS 

AN EDITOR AND PUBLISHER — THE CHARGE THAT HE WAS THE 
FIRST PERSON TO CIRCULATE CHARGES AGAINST THE PASTOR. 

T I THE gentleman who, throughout the entire excitement, 
-*- figured more or less prominently in it, and who it is alleged 
was the first to circulate rumors of his pastor's criminality, is 
about sixty-four years of age. " He was, " says a writer, 
" formerly one of the foremost dry goods merchants in New 
York, being the senior partner of the house of Bowen, McNamee 
& Co., who- many years ago did business down Broadwaj', 
below the Astor House, afterward in a splendid block erected 
on the site of the old Broadway Theatre. He was from its 
foundation one of the pillars of Plymouth church, and probably 
was more largely instrumental than any other one man, in 
securing the services of Mr. Beecher, as its pastor. He was 
always a radical abolitionist, having received his business, 
political and religious training from the Tappans, who were 
among the pioneers in the anti-slavery movement in New York. 
His house at one time had a large southern trade, but when 
sectional strife was at its flood, the names of Bowen, McNamee 
& Co. were among the first to be put upon what was called the 
" black list," and southern merchants were emphatically warned 
not to patronize them. The}' accepted the situation, and boldly 
unfurled a banner bearing the following inscription "Our Goods 
and not our Principles, for sale.'" Mr. Bowen was one of the 
19* 441 



4:4:2 BO WEN WALKED THE PLANK. 

founders of the Independent and it is not too much to say that 
no paper in this county in its inception, ever had such a bril- 
liant array of talent, editorial, and as stated contributors as 
this. Its responsible editors were, Rev. Joshua Leavitt, Rev. 
Geo. B. Cheever, D. D., Rev. Leonard Bacon, D. D. and Rev. 
I£. S. Storrs, Jr. D. D. Among its stated contributors were 
Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chas. L. Brace, 
Rev. F. D. Huntington, (at that time a popular Unitarian 
clergyman in Boston,) Edna Dean Proctor, and many others. 
Mr. Bowen was the commercial editor, and furnished, or was 
responsible for the " sinews of war." During the financial 
storm of 1857, " a feature" in the business department of the 
Independent, was the publication weekty, of a list of failures. 
Many commercial and mercantile houses protested against this 
feature, but the commercial editor with characteristic firmness 
adhered to the plan, until one fine day the old, and as was 
supposed, wealthy firm of Bowen, McNamee & Co., had to 
" walk the plank " whereupon it was suddenly discovered that 
the publication of the list of failures was not expedient. It 
came to pass, in the course of human events that Bowen aban- 
doned mercantile pursuits, and finally became (after the re- 
tirement of Mr. Richards) the publisher of the Independent, 
and is now publisher, proprietor, and, in name at least, editor. 
He is a shrewd, sharp, business man, but some of his transac- 
tions, in relation to the Beecher scandal, and his summary dismis- 
sal of Mr. Tilton from his position as editor of the Independent 
and the "Brooklyn Union" are, to say the least a- little ques- 
tionable. 

Some two years ago Mr. Bowen disposed of his interest in 
the Brooklyn Union and now devotes his entire attention to 
the Independent. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

MR. BEECHER UNBOSOMS HIMSELF TO THE COMMITTEE HIS VERY 

REMARKABLE EXPLANATION OF HIS RELATIONS TO TILTON AND 
HIS FAMILY, ALLEGES THAT HE WAS BLACKMAILED BY TILTON 
AND MOULTON, DENIES ANY CRIMINALITY WITH MRS. TILTON 
AND GIVES MOST ASTOUNDING EXPLANATIONS OF THE LET- 
TERS CONFESSING SOME SIN IN THE PREMISES. 

rpHE evening Mr. Moulton's statement was being read in 
-*- New York and Brooklyn for the first time, there was a 
busy scene at the residence when the examination was held. 
That evening thirty or fort} r stenographers were engaged in 
preparing for the press Mr. Beecher's statement in defense, 
which is given here. It was published on the ensuing morn- 
ing :— 

Gentlemen of the Committee: In the statement addressed to 
the public on the 22d of July last I gave an explicit, compre- 
hensive and solemn denial to the charge made by Theodore 
Tilton against me. That denial I now repeat and reaffirm. I 
also stated in that communication that I should appear before 
your committee with a more detailed statement and explana- 
tion of the facts in the case. For this the time has now come. 
Four years ago Theodore Tilton fell from one of the proudest 
editorial chairs in America, where he represented the cause of 
religion, humanity and patriotism, and in a few months there- 
after became the associate and representative of Victoria Wood- 
hull and the friend of her strange course. By his follies he 
was bankrupt in reputation, in occupation and in resources. 
The interior history of which I am now to give a brief outline, 
is the history of his attempts to so employ me as to re-instate 

443 



4:4:4: REMARKABLE STATEMENT. 

him in business, restore his reputation, and place him again 
upon the eminence from which he had fallen. It is a sad his- 
tory, to the full meaning of which I have but recently awakened, 
Entangled in a wilderness of complications, I followed, until 
latety, a false theory and delusive hope, believing that the 
friend who assured me of his determination and ability to con- 
trol the passionate vagaries of Mr. Tilton, to restore his house- 
hold, to rebuild his fortunes and to vindicate me, would be 
equal to that promise. His self-confessed failure has made 
clear to me what for a long time I did not suspect. The real 
motive of Mr. Tilton. My narrative does not represent a sin- 
gle standpoint, only as regards my opinion of Theodore Tilton. 
It begins at my cordial intimacy with him in his earlier career, 
and later m# lamentation and sorrowful but hopeful affection 
for him during the period of his initial wanderings from truth 
or virtue. It describes nry repentance over evils befalling him, 
of which I was made to believe myself the cause, my persever- 
ing and friendly despairing efforts to save him and his family 
by any sacrifice of myself not absolutely dishonorable, and my 
growing conviction that his perpetual follies and blunders ren- 
dered his recovery impossible. I can now see that he is and 
has been from the beginning of the difficulty, a selfish and reck- 
less schemer, pursuing a plan of mingled good and hatred, and 
weaving about me a network of suspicious misunderstandings, 
plots and lies to which my own innocent words and acts, nay 
even my thoughts of kindness toward him have been made to 
contribute. These successive views of him must be kept in 
mind to explain my course through the last four years. That 
I was blind so long, as to the real motive of the intrigue going 
on around me was due partly to my own overwhelming public 
engagements, and partly to my complete surrender of this 
affair and all papers and questions connected with it into the 
hands of Mr. Moulton, who was intensely confident he could 
manage it successfully. I suffered much, but I inquired little, 
Mr. Moulton was chary to me of Mr. Tilton's confidences in 
him, reporting to me occasionally in a general wa} T Mr. Tilton's 
words and outbreaks of passion only as an element of trouble 
which he was able to control, and as additional proofs of the 
wisdom of leaving it to him. His command of the situation 
seemed to me at the time complete, immersed as I was in inces- 
sant cares and duties, and only too glad to be relieved from 
considering the detail and wretched complications, the origin 
and fact of which remained, in spite of all friendly intervention, 



BO WEN'S SE VEN THO US AND. 445 

a perpetual burden to m}' soul. I would not read in the papers 
about it, 1 would not talk about it, I made Moulton for a long 
period m} r confidant, and my only channel of information. 
From time to time suspicions were. aroused in me by indications 
that Mr. Tilton was acting the part of an enemy, but the sus- 
picions were rapidly allayed by his own behavior towards me 
in other moods, and b}- the assurances of Mr. Moulton, who 
ascribed the circumstances to misunderstanding or to malice 
on the part of others. 

It is plain to me now that it was not until Mr. Tilton had 
fallen into disgrace and lost his salaiy r that he thought it 
necessary to assail me with charges which he pretended to 
have had in mind for six months. The domestic offense which 
he alleged was very quickly and easily put aside, but yet in 
such a way as to keep my feelings stirred up in order that I 
might, through my friends, be used to extract from Mr. Bowen 
$7,000, the amount of a claim in dispute between them. A 
check for that sum in hand, Mr. Tilton signed an agreement of 
peace and concord, not drawn hy me, but accepted by me as 
sincere. The Golden Age had been started, he had the capital 
to carry it on for a while. He was sure that he was to head a 
great social revolution. 

With returning prosperity he had apparently no griefs which 
could not be covered by his signature to the articles of peace, 
yet the change in that covenant, made by him before signing it, 
and represented to me as necessary merely to relieve him from 
the imputation of having originated and circulated certain old 
and shameless slanders about me, were made, as now appears, 
to leave him free for future operations upon me and against 
me. 

So long as he was or thought he was on the road to a new success, 
his conduct toward me was as friendly as he knew how to make 
it. His assumption of superiority and magnanimity, and his 
patronizing manner were trifles at which I could afford to smile, 
and which I bore with the greater humilit}-, since I still retained 
the profound impression made upon me, as explained in the 
following narrative : That I had been a cause of overwhelming 
disaster to him, and that his complete restoration to public 
standing and household happiness was a reparation justly 
required of me, and the only one which I could make ; but with 
a peculiar genius for blunders, he fell almost at every step into 
new complications and difficulties, and in every such instance 
it was his policy to bring coercion to bear upon mj" honor, my 



446 BEECHER KNO WS HIS INNOCENCE. 

conscience and my affections, for the purpose of procuring his 
extrication at my expense. Theodore Tilton knew me well. 
He has said again and again to his friends that if the}' wished 
to gain any influence over me they must work upon the sympa- 
thetic side of my nature. To this he has addressed himself 
steadily for four years, using as a lever without scruples my 
^attachment to nry friends, to m}- family, to his own household, 
and even my old affection for himself. Not blind to his fault, 
but resolved to look on him as favorably and hopefully as pos- 
sible, and ignorant of his deep malice. I labored earnestly, 
even desperately, for his salvation. For four years I have been 
trying to make the man as great as he conceived himself to be, 
to restore to prosperity and public confidence one who, in the 
midst of my efforts in his behalf, patronized disreputable peo- 
ple and doctrines, refused, when I besought him to separate 
himself from them, and ascribed to my agency the increasing 
ruin which he was persistently bringing upon himself, and which 
I was doing my utmost to avert. It was hard to do anything 
for such a man. I might as well have tried to fill a seive with 
water. 

In the latter stages of the history he actually incited and 
created difficulties, apparently for no other purpose than- to 
drive me to fresh exertions. I refused to endorse his wild 
views and associates. The best I could do was to speak well 
of him, mention those good qualities and abilities which I still 
believe him to possess in his higher moods, and keeping silence 
concerning the evil things which I was assured and believed 
had been greatly exaggerated by public report. I would not 
think him so bad as my friends did. I trusted to the germs of 
good which I thought still lived in him. 

On the appearance of the first attack from Tilton, I immedi- 
ately called for a thorough examination by a committee of my 
church. I am not responsible for delays in the publicity of the 
details. All the harm I have so long dreaded has come to 
pass. The time has arrived when I can freely speak in vindi- 
cation of myself. During four years singularly burdened with 
labor, I find myself in a position where I know my innocence 
without being able to prove it. Mr. Beecher sa}'s Tilton was 
first known to him as a reporter of his sermons, and he gives 
his history up to the time when Tilton became his assistant 
editor of the Independent, in which relation he, Beecher, became 
greatly attached to him. During vacations, while my family 
were at my farm, I became so familiar with the families of my 



REGARDS TILTON'S SITUATION CRITICAL. 417 

friends and their children, that I went in and out daily as in my 
own house. Mr. Tilton urged me to do the same at his house, 
speaking extravagantly of his wife's esteem for me. On return- 
ing from England I paved the way for him to become the sole 
editor of the Independent. The violent assault on me by Til- 
ton in 1866, on account of 1113' Cleveland letter, broke off my 
connection with the Independent. The social relations with 
Tilton continued very kindly until 1868 and 1869, but on polit- 
ical matters there was a coolness. 

During all the time of the visits to Tilton's house there never 
was the slightest hint from him or any member of his family of 
any dissatisfaction with my familiar relations to his household. 
I gave copies of my books to Mrs. Tilton, sent flowers from my 
farm to a dozen families, which she occasionally shared, and 
only once gave her a present, a brooch of little value, as one of 
the souvenirs of nry European trip. Beecher refers to the 
affection shown him Iry the children of Tilton, and Mrs. Tilton 
seemed an affectionate mother, a devoted wife looking up to 
her husband. So far from supposing that 1113' presence and 
influence was alienating Mrs. Tilton from her famil3 r relations, 
I thought on the contrary that it was giving her strength and 
encouraging her to hold fast upon a man evidently sliding into 
dangerous associations and liable to be immersed by unex- 
ampled self-conceit. I regarded Mr. Tilton as in a very critical 
period of his life, and used to think it fortunate he had good 
home influences about him. During the late 3*ears of our 
friendship Mrs. Tilton spoke very mournfully to me about the 
tendency of her husband to great laxity of doctrine in religion 
and morals. She gave me to understand that he denied the 
divinity of Christ, the inspiration of the scriptures and most 
articles of the orthodox faith, while his views as to the sanctity 
of the marriage relation were undergoing constant change in 
the direction of free love. In the latter part of Juty, Mrs. 
Tilton was sick, and at her request I visited her. She seemed 
much depressed, but gave me no hint of any trouble having ref- 
erence to me. I cheered her as best I could, and prayed with 
her just before leaving. This w r as our last interview before the 
trouble broke out in the familv. I describe it because it was 
the last, and its character has a bearing upon a latter part of 
m\ T stoiy. Concerning all my other visits, it is sufficient to sa3' 
that at no interview which ever took place between Mrs. Tilton 
and myself did anything occur which might not have occurred 
with perfect propriety between a brother and sister, between a 



448 MRS. BEECEER INDIGNANT. 

father and child, or between a man of honor and the wife of his 
dearest friend, nor did airy thing ever happen which she and I 
sought to conceal from her husband. 

After giving reasons for the removal of Tilton from the edi- 
torial chair of the Independent, Mr. Beecher, proceeded : After 
Mr. Tilton's return from the West in December, 1870, a young 
girl whom Mrs. Tilton had taken into the family, educated and 
"treated like her own child, (her testimony I understand is be- 
fore the committee) was sent to me with an urgent request that 
I would visit Mrs. Tilton at her mother's. She said that Mrs. 
Tilton had left her home and gone to her mother's in consequence 
of the ill-treatment of her husband. She then gave me an ac- 
count of what she had seen, of the crueltj" and abuse on the part 
of the husband that shocked me ; and yet more, when with 
downcast look she said that Mr. Tilton had visited her chamber 
in the night, and sought her consent to his wishes. I immedi- 
ately visited Mrs. Tilton at her mother's, and received an 
account of her home life and the despotism of her husband, 
and of the management of a woman whom he had made house- 
keeper, which seems like a nightmare dream. The question 
was whether she should go back or separate forever from her 
husband. I asked permission to bring nry wife to see them, 
whose judgment in all domestic relations I thought better than 
my own, and accordingly a second visit was made. The result 
of that interview was that my wife was indignant toward Mr. 
Tilton, and declared no consideration on earth could induce her 
to remain an hour with a man who had treated her with an 
hundreth part of such insult and cruehVv. I felt as strongly as 
she did, but hesitated as I always do at giving advice in favor 
of a separation. It was agreed that my wife should give her 
final advice at another visit. The next day, when ready to go, 
she wished a final word, but there was company, and the child- 
ren were present, and so I wrote on a scrap of paper, " I incline 
to think your view is right, and that a separation and settlement 
of support will be the wisest, and that in his present desperate 
state her presence near him is far more likely to produce hatred 
than her absence." Mrs. Tilton did not tell me that my pres- 
ence had anything to do with this trouble, nor did she let me 
know that on the July previous he had extorted from her a 
confession of exces-ive affection for me. On the evening of 
December 27th, 1870, Mr. Bowen, on his way home, called at 
my house and handed me a letter from Mr. Tilton. It was as 
nearly as I can remember in the following terms : 



TILTON REMOVED FROM THE INDEPENDENT 449 

Henry Ward Beecher: For reasons which 3-011 explicitly 
know, and which I forbear to state, I demand that you with- 
draw from the pulpit and quit Brooklyn as a residence. 

[Signed] Theodore Tilton. 

I read it over twice and turned to Bowen and said, " This 
man is crazy, this is sheer insanity," and other like words. 
Bowen professed to be ignorant of the contents, and I handed 
him the letter to read. We at once fell into a conversation 
about Mr. Tilton, during which Bowen stated that Tilton had 
been reduced from an editor of the Independent to a contributor, 
because his religious and social views were ruining the paper, 
the conversation resulting in the opinion that Bowen could not 
retain relations with Tilton. Bowen derided Tilton's letter 
and promised his friendship to Beecher, and Tilton was subse- 
quently removed from the Union. Beecher says he felt unhappy 
at Tilton's disaster, as his affairs did not promise that S}mipa- 
thy and strength which makes one's house as mine has been in 
times of adversity, a refuge and tower of defence. 

Mr. Beecher continues : On the 29th of December, 1870, Mr. 
Tilton having learned that I had replied to his threatening let- 
ter by expressing such an opinion of him as to set Mr. Bowen 
finally against him and bring him face to face with immediate 
ruin, extorted from his wife, then suffering from a severe illness, 
a document incriminating me and prepared an elaborate attack 
upon me. On Tuesday evening, Dec. 30th, 1870, about seven 
o'clock, Francis D. Moulton called at my house, and, with in- 
tense earnestness, said, " I wish you to go with me and see Mr. 
Tilton." I replied that I could not then, as I was just going 
to my prayer meeting. With the most positive manner he said, 
" You must go ; somebody else will take care of the meeting." 
I went with him, not knowing what trouble agitated him, but 
vaguely thinking that I might now learn the solution of the 
recent threatening letter. On the way I asked what was the 
reason of this visit, to which he replied that Mr. Tilton would 
inform me, or words to that effect. On entering his house, Mr. 
Moulton locked the door, saying something about not being 
interrupted. He requested me to go into the front chamber 
over the parlor. I was under the impression that Mr. Tilton 
was going to pour out upon me his anger for colleaguing with 
Bowen and for the advice of separation given to his wife. I 
wished Mr. Moulton to be with me as a witness, but he insisted 
I should go by myself. Mr. Tilton received me coldly, but 



450 BEECHER THUNDERSTRUCK. 

calmly. After a word or two, standing in front of me with a 
memorandum in his hand, he began a set oration. He charged 
me in substance with acting for a long time in an unfriendly 
spirit, that I had sought his downfall, had spread injurious 
rumors about him, was using my place and influence to under- 
mine him, had advised Mr. Bowen to dismiss him, and much 
more that I cannot remember. He then declared that I had 
Injured him in his family relations, had joined with his mother- 
in-law in producing discord in his house, advised a separation, 
and alienated his wife's affections from him, had led her to love 
me more than any living being, had corrupted her moral nature, 
and had taught her to be insincere, lying and irvpocritical, and 
ended by charging that I had made wicked proposals to her. 
Until he reached this I had listened with the same contempt, 
under the impression that he was attempting to bully me. But 
with the last charge he produced a paper purporting to be a 
certified statement of a previous confession made to him by his 
wife of her love for me, and that I had made proposals to her 
of an impure nature. He said that this confession had been 
made to him in July, six months previous, that his sense of 
honor and affection would not permit any such document to re- 
main in existence, that he had burned the original and should 
now destroy the only copy, and he then tore the paper into 
small pieces. If I had been shocked at such a statement, I was 
absolutely thunderstruck when he closed the interview lyy re- 
questing me to repair at once to his house, where he said Eliza- 
beth was waiting for me, and learn from her lips the truth of his 
stories, in so far as they concerned her. This fell like a thun- 
derbolt upon me. Could it be possible that his wife, whom I 
had regarded as a type of moral goodness, should have made 
such false and atrocious statements, and yet if she had not how 
would he dare to send me to her for confirmation of his charges? 
I went forth like a street walker ; I believe Moulton w^ent with 
me to the door of Tilton's house. The houskeeper (the same 
woman of whom Mrs. Tilton has complained) seemed to have 
been instructed by him, for she evidently expected me, and 
showed me at once to Mrs. Tilton's room. Mrs. Tilton lay 
upon her bed, white as marble, with closed eyes as in a trance, 
and with her hands upon her bosom, palm to palm, like one in 
prayer. She made no motion and gave no sign of recognition 
of my presence ; I sat down near her and said, " Elizabeth, 
Theodore has been making very serious charges against me and 
sent me to you for confirmation." She made no reply or sign, 



THEIR ALIEN LO VE8. 45 1 

yet it was plain she was conscious and listening. I repeated 
some of his statements, that I had brought discord to the family, 
had alienated her from him, had sought to break up the family, 
usurped his influence, and then as well as I could I added he 
said that I had made improper suggestions to her, and that she 
had admitted the fact to him last July. I said "Elizabeth, 
have you made such statements to him ? " She made no answer. 
I repeated the question. Tears ran down her cheeks and she 
very slightly bowed her head in acquiescence. I said you can- 
not mean you have stated all that he has charged. She opened 
her e}'es and began in a slow and feeble manner to explain how 
sick she had been, how wearied out with importunity, that he 
had confessed his own alien loves and said he could not bear 
to think that she was better than he, that she might win him to 
reformation if she would confess that she had loved me more 
than him, and that the\ r w r ould repent and go on with future 
concord. I cannot give her language, but only the tenor of 
her representations. I received them impatiently. I spoke to 
her in the shortest language of her course. I said to her, have 
I ever made any improper advances to }*ou? She said no. 
Then I asked " Why did you say so to your husband? She 
seemed deeply distressed ; "my friend (by that designation she 
almost always called me) I am sorry, but I could not help it. 
What could I do? " I told her she could state in writing what 
she had now told me. She beckoned for her writing materials, 
which I handed from the secretary standing near by, and she 
sat up in bed and wrote a brief counter statement in a sort of 
postscript. She denied explicitly that I had ever offered any 
improper solicitations to her, that being the only charge made 
against me b} T Mr. Tilton, or sustained by the statement about 
the confessions which he had read to me. I dreamed of no 
worse charge at that time. The mere thought that he could 
make it and could have extorted any evidence on which to base 
it was enough to take away m}- senses. Neither my conscious- 
ness of its utter falsehood nor Mrs. Tilton's retraction of her 
part in it could remove the shock from my heart and head. 
Indeed her admission to me that she had stated under any cir- 
cumstances to her husband so wicked a falsehood, was the 
crowning blow of all. It seemed to me as if she was going to 
die, that her mind was overthrown, and that I was in some 
dreadful way mixed up in it and might be left by her dealh 
with this terrible accusation hanging over me. I returned like 
one in a dream to Moulton's house, where 1 said very little and 



452 INTER VIEW WITH MO TILTON. 

soon went home. It has been said that I confessed guilt and 
expressed remorse. This is utterly false. Is it likely that with 
Mrs. Tilton's retraction in my pocket I should thus stultify my- 
self? On the next day at evening, Mr. Moulton called at my 
house and came up into my bedroom. He said that Mrs. Til- 
ton, on her husband's return to her, after our interview, had 
informed him what she had done and that I had her retraction. 
Moulton expostulated with me, and said the retraction, under 
the circumstances, would not mend matters, but only awaken 
fresh discord between husband and wife, and do great injury to 
Mrs. Tilton without helping me. Mrs. Tilton, he said, had 
already recalled in writing the retraction made to me, and, of 
course, there might be no end to these contradictions. Mean- 
while Tilton had destroyed his wife's first letter, acknowledg- 
ing the confession, and Mr. Moulton claimed that I had taken 
a mean advantage and made dishonorable use of Theodore's 
request that I should visit her, in obtaining from her a written 
contradiction to the document not in existence. He said all 
difficulties could be settled without airy such papers, and that I 
ought to give it up. He was under great excitement. He 
made no verbal threats, but he opened his overcoat, and with 
some emphatic remarks, showed a pistol, which afterwards he 
took out and left on the bureau near which he stood. I gave 
the paper to him, and after a few moments talk he left. 

Beecher then refers to the great distress of mind caused to 
him b} T the action of Mrs. Tilton in this matter, but finally 
supposed she had been overborne by sickness, shattered in 
mind and no longer responsible for her acts. His soul went 
out to her in pity. He blamed himself for imprudence and 
want of foresight, for he thought it was the result of her undue 
affection for him, and he could have borne an}' punishment if 
that poor clild could but emerge from this cloud. He judged 
from Tilton's anger and fury that the charge made hy him and 
supported try the accusation of his wife, was to be publicly 
pressed against him, which might result in great disaster, if 
not absolute ruin. He considered his name, his church, every- 
thing connected with him involved. He says, " M} T earnest 
desire to avoid public accusation and the evils necessarily 
flowing from it has been one of the leading motives that must 
explain my action during these three or four years." Moulton 
visited Beecher at this time, finding him in a sore and distressed 
condition. Moulton seemed convinced that Beecher had been 
seeking Tilton's downfall ; had leagued with Bowen against 



MO ULTON MAKES MEMORANDA. 453 

him, and by advice had nearly destroyed his family. Beecher 
says he needed no arguments to induce him to do or say an}'- 
thing to remed}' the injury of which he believed he had been 
the active cause. Moulton assured Beecher of Tilton's purity 
and faithfulness to his wife. Beecher felt convicted of slander 
in its meanest form, became intensely excited, felt his mind in 
danger of giving away, and pouring forth his heart in unre- 
strained grief and bitterness of self-accusation, but denj'ing 
any intentional wrong. Moulton said if Tilton could feel 
assured of Beecher's friendliness, there would be no trouble in 
making reconciliation. I gave him leave to state to Theodore 
1113- feelings. He proposed that I should write a letter. I de- 
clined, but said that he could report our interview. He then 
prepared to make a memorandum of the talk, and sat down at 
my table and took down, as I supposed, a condensed report of 
my talk, for I went on still pouring out my wounded feelings 
over this great desolation in Tilton's family. It was not a dic- 
tation of sentence after sentence, he a mere amanuensis and I 
composing for him. Mr. Moulton was putting into his own 
shape part of that which I was saying in my own manner with 
profuse explanations. This paper of Mr. Moul ton's was a mere 
memorandum of points to be used by him in setting forth my 
feelings. That it contains matter and points derived from me 
is without doubt, but they were put with sentences b} r him and 
expressed as he understood them, not as my words, but as hints 
of my figures and letters, to be used by him in conversing with 
Mr. Tilton. He did not read the paper to me, nor did I read 
it, nor have I ever seen it or heard it read that I remember, 
until the publication of Mr. Tilton's recent documents, and 
now reading it I see in it thoughts that point to the matter of 
my discourse, but it is not 1113- paper, nor are those my sentences ; 
nor is it a correct report of what I said. It is a mere string of 
hints, hastily made by an unpractised writer as helps to his 
memory in representing to Mr. Tilton how I feel toward his 
family. If more than this be claimed, if it be set forth as in 
any proper sense nry letter, I then disown it and denounce 
some of its sentences, and particularly that in which I am made 
to sa3 T that I had obtained Mrs. Tilton's forgiveness. I never 
could have said that, even in substance. I had not obtained 
nor asked an}' forgiveness from her, and nobody pretended that 
I had done so. Neither could I ever have said that I humbled 
myself before Tilton as before God, except in the sense that 
both to God and to the man I thought 1 had deeply injured I 



454: BEECHER SUPPOSED IT DESTROYED. 

humbled myself, as I certainly did ; but it is useless to analyze 
a paper prepared as this was. The remainder of my plain 
statement concerning it will be its best comment. This docu- 
ment was written upon three separate half sheets of large letter 
paper. After it was finished Mr. Moulton asked me if I would 
sign it. I said no. It was not my letter. He replied that it 
-would have more weight if I Would in some way indicate that 
he was authorized to explain my sentiments. I took m} r pen 
and at some distance below die writing and upon the lower 
margin, I indicated that I had committed the document in 
trust to Mr. Moulton. I signed the line thus written by me. 
A few words more as to its future fate. Mr. Moulton of his 
own accord said that after using it he would in two or three 
days bring the memorandum back to me, and he cautioned me 
about disclosing in any way that there was a difficulty between 
Mr. Tilton and me, as it would be injurious to Tilton to have 
it known that I had quarrelled with him as well as to me to 
have rumors set afloat. I did not trouble myself about it until 
more than a } T ear afterwards, when Tilton began to write up 
his case, (of which hereafter,) and was looking up documents. I 
wondered what was in the old memorandum and desired to see 
it for greater certainty. So one day I suddenly asked Moulton 
for that memorandum and said, " You promised to return it to 
me." He seemed confused for a moment and said, "Did I?" 
" Certainly," I answered. He replied that the paper had been 
destroyed, and on my putting the question again, " that paper 
was burnt up long ago." 

During the next two j^ears, in various conversations of his 
own accord, he spoke of it as destroyed. I had never asked 
for nor authorized the destruction of this paper, but I was not 
allowed to know that that document was in existence, until a 
distinguished editor in New York within a few weeks past 
assured me that Mr. Moulton had shown him the original, and 
that he had examined my signature to be sure of its genuine- 
ness. I know there was a copy of it since this statement was 
in preparation. While I reject this memorandum as my work, 
or an accurate condensation of my statements, it does undoubt- 
edly represent that I was in profound sorrow and that I blamed 
myself with great severity for the disasters of Tilton's family, 
and I had not then the light I now have. There was much 
that weighed heavily on my heart and conscience, which now 
weighs only on my heart. Soon after this I met Tilton at 
Moulton's house. Either Moulton was sick, or was very late 



BEECHER '£ LETTERS. 455 

in rising, for he was in bed. The subject of my feelings and 
conduct towards Tilton was introduced. I made a statement 
of the motives under which I had acted in counseling Bowen 
of ni}' feelings in regard to Tilton's famil}-, disclaiming with 
horror the thought of wrong, and expressing my desire to do 
whatever lay in human power to remedy any evil I had 
occasioned, and to reunite his family. Tilton was silent and 
sullen. He played the part of an injured man, but Moulton 
said to Mr. Tilton with intense emphasis, that is all that gen- 
tleman can sa3', etc. You ought to accept it. It is an honor- 
able basis of reconciliation. This he repeated two or three 
times, and Tilton's countenance cheered up under Moulton's 
strong talk. We shook hands and parted in a friendly way. 
Not very long afterwards Tilton asked me to his house, and 
said that he should be glad to have the good old times renewed. 
I do not remember whether I ever took a meal after this under 
his roof, but I certainly was invited by him to renew my visits 
as formerly. I never resumed my intimacy with the family, 
but once or tw r ice I went there soon after my reconciliation 
with Tilton, and at his request. Beecher gives an account of a 
reconciliatory scene at Tilton's house in the presence of Tilton's 
wife, which Beecher now thinks was for effect in order that he 
(Beecher) could be used to get money out of Bowen for Tilton, 
which the latter claimed was due him. Moulton lost no oppor- 
tunities of presenting the kindest views of Tilton, but com- 
plained that Mrs. Tilton did not trust her husband nor Moulton, 
and the latter urged Beecher to inspire confidence in Mrs. 
Tilton in Moulton and lead her to take kinder views of Theo- 
dore. A letter with such intent was accordingly written to her 
Feb. 17th, 1871. A copy was furnished the committee. Beecher 
said he had no recollection of seeing or hearing read a letter of 
Tilton's of Feb. 7th, 1872". In explanation of saying in a letter 
to Mrs. Tilton that he did not expect to be alive many days, 
Beecher states he felt as if he would be struck with apoplexy 
for the past fifteen years. Tilton dropped from the church roll. 
Beecher then details the action of the church relative to expung- 
ing Tilton's name from the rolls, and said that in the Woodhull 
Advertiser of May, 1871, was an article shadowing an account 
of a disturbance in Tilton's family, but the full account was 
delayed till November, 1872, ostensibly by Tilton's influence. 
During this time both Moulton and Tilton made a heroine of 
Woodhull, and invited her to their*houses. Beecher had three 
interviews with Woodhull, at the last of which she threatened 



456 BE EBBED IJSF JUDGMENT. 

him because he declined presiding at one of her lectures in 
Steinway Hall, and both Tilton and Moulton made most stren- 
uous exertions to induce Bcecher to identify himself with her. 
She was denounced heartily by Beecher as the centre of every- 
thing that was foul or vile, and he persistently resisted all 
efforts to identify himself with her. Beecher says he gave a 
letter to Moulton which Mrs. Tilton wrote him, in which she 
states that her husband and herself were going West, and 
expresses the hope that the proposed interview between Tilton 
and Beecher would be productive of good. This letter Moulton 
would not allow Beecher to see. Bcecher then gives the 
account of the tripartite treaty of concord, peace and amnesty 
between them, Bowen paying Tilton $7,000, claimed. Subse- 
quently when the Woodhulls had endeavored to obtain money 
out of Beecher and his wife, that woman published her version 
of the Tilton scandal, with which Tilton was believed to be in 
connivance. Beecher refers to letters written to him, one of 
which was to Moulton, in which he refers to the approach of 
death. He says it has been printed by Tilton in garbled form. 
The tripartite treaty was against Beecher's judgment, and was 
a patched-up peace. He continues : That I have previously 
erred in judgment with this perplexed case, no one is more 
conscious than I am. I chose the wrong path and accepted 
disastrous guidance in the beginning, and have indeed traveled 
on a rough and ragged edge in my prolonged efforts to suppress 
this scandal which has at last spread so much desolation through 
the land. I cannot admit that I erred in desiring to keep these 
matters out of sight. In this respect I appeal to you and to 
all Christian men to judge whether almost any personal sacri- 
fice ought not to have been made rather than suffer the morals 
of an entire community, especially the young, to be corrupted 
by the filthy details of scandalous falsehood daily iterated and 
amplified for the gratification of the impure curiosity, and the 
demoralization of every child that is old enough to read. The 
full nature of this history requires that one more fact should be 
told, especially as Mr. Tilton has invited it. Money has been 
obtained from me in the course of these affairs in considerable 
sums, but I did not at first look upon the suggestions that I 
should contribute to Mr. Tilton's wants as savoring of black- 
mail. This did not occur to me until I had paid perhaps $2,000. 
Afterwards I contributed at one time $5,000. After the money 
had been paid over in five $1,000 bills, to raise which I mort- 
gaged the house I live in, I felt very much dissatisfied with 



CONCL USION OF UIS DEFENCE. 457 

myself about it. Finally a square demand and threat made to 
me by my confidential friend, that if $5,000 were not paid, Til- 
ton's charges would be laid before the public. This, I saw at 
once, was blackmail in its boldest form, and never paid one 
cent of it ; but challenged and requested the fullest exposure. 
But, after the summer of 1873, 1 became inwardly satisfied that 
Tilton was an inherently and inevitably ruined man. I no 
longer trusted either his word or his honor. I came to feel 
that his kindness was but a snare, and his professions of friend- 
ship treacherous. He did not mean well by me nor by his own 
household ; but I suffered all the more on this account, as he 
had grown up under my influence and my church, and I could 
not free myself from a certain degree of responsibility for his 
misdoings, such as visits a father. Beecher then gives the 
action of the church relative to the proceedings of the examin- 
ing committee. Beecher states he wrote a letter of resignation, 
but did not send it in, as he considered it a self-sacrifice which 
would not stop the trouble, but he showed it to Mr. Moulton, 
and thinks possibly Moulton copied it. Beecher has the orig- 
inal. Beecher concludes as follows : 

Gentlemen of the Committee : — In the note requesting your 
appointment I asked that you should make a full investigation 
of all sources of information. You are witnesses that I have 
in no way influenced or interfered with your proceedings or 
duties. I have wished the investigation to be so searching 
that nothing could unsettle its results. I have nothing to gain 
by any policy of suppression or compromise. For four years I 
have borne and suffered enough. I will not go a step further. 
I will be free. I will not walk under the rod or yoke. If any 
man would do me a favor let him tell all he knows now. It is 
not mine to lay down the law of honor in regard to the use of 
other persons' confidential communications, but, in so far as 
my own writings are concerned, there is not a letter or docu- 
ment which I am afraid to have exhibited, and I authorize and 
call upon all living persons to produce and print forthwith 
whatever writings they have of mine. It is time, for the sake 
of decenc}' and public morals, that this matter should be 
brought to an end. It is an open pool of corruption, exhaling 
deadly vapors.. For six weeks the nation has risen up and sat 
down upon scandal. Not a great war or revolution could have 
filled the newspapers more than this question of domestic 
trouble, magnified a thousandfold, and, like a sore spot on the 
human body, drawing to itself every morbid humor in the blood. 
20 



458 BEECUEKS CROSS-EXAMINATION. 

Whoever is buried with it, it is time that this abomination be 
buried below all touch or power of resurrection. 

The following are the most interesting parts of Mr. Beecher's 
cross-examination : 

Question. — Can you tell how you came to write that letter of 
despondency dated Feb. 5th, 1872, to Moulton? Answer. — I 
would come back from a whole week's lecturing and would be 
perfectly fagged out, and the first thing on getting home there 
would be some confounded development opening on me. In 
this state of mind, in which I had no longer any resis-tancy or 
rebound in me, I would work the whole week out, and in this 
way it happened time and time and time again. On one of 
these occasions I went to Moulton's store. Moulton had always 
treated me with the greatest personal kindness. He treated 
me as if he loved me. On this occasion I went down to the 
store to see him and his face was cold toward me. 

I proposed to walk with him, and he walked with me in 
such a way that it seemed to me as though it was irksome to 
him to have me with him, as though he wanted to shake me off. 
Now anything like that all but kills me. I don't wish to push 
myself upon any body, to feel that I have pushed myself upon 
any human being who does not want me, is enough to kill me, 
and to be treated so by him at that time made it seem to me 
as though the end of the world had come, for he was the only 
man on the globe I could talk with on this subject. I was shut 
up to every human being. I could not go to nry wife. I could 
n >t go to my children. I could not go to my church. He was 
the only one person to whom I could talk, and when I got that 
rebuff from him it seemed as though it would kill me, and the 
letter was the production of that mood into which I was thrown. 

Q. — Do you suppose that you or the community would have 
heard anything of the trouble of Tilton with his family had he 
been a successful man? A. — I am morally certain that the 
thing would have been deeper buried than the bottom of the 
sea if Mr. Tilton had gone right on to a prosperous career and 
he had had the food which he had been accustomed to ; but 
Mr. Tilton is a man who starves for want of flattery, and no 
power on God's earth can make him happy when he is not 
receiving some incense. 

With reference to his first acquaintance with Moulton, Mr. 
Beecher said he only had a casual acquaintance with him until 
he came to his (Beecher's) house on this business. 



IF T1LT0N COULD BE CUT IN TWO. 459 

Q. — Did Moulton say anything when the so-called apology 
was written, to the effect that there was nothing about the case 
but what an apology might cover? A. — lie made the impres- 
sion on my mind not only that Tilton had been greatly injured, 
but that Tilton was saturated with conviction that I was using 
my whole powers against him. When any disclosure of my 
real feelings was made to him he treated it with a kind of incred- 
ulty as if I was acting a part. But when I shed tears, and my 
voice broke, and I walked up and down the room with unfeigned 
distress, he seemed to be touched, and finally he said, " Now if 
that is the way you feel, if Mr. Tilton could be made to see it, 
this whole thing could be settled. 

Q. — If you used these words, " He would have been a better 
man in my circumstances than I have been," what did 3-011 
mean by them ? A. — 1 do not know, I'm sure. The conversa- 
tion was hypothetical in respect to the betrayal of friends in an 
hour of emergenc3 r , in respect to undermining Tilton just at the 
time when Bowen and all the world were leaving him, in res 
pect to want of fidelity, and there is one thing that you are to 
bear in mind, a thing that I have never mentioned to any of 
you, and that had a very strong influence upon me. I never 
can forget a kindness done to me. When the war broke out 
my son went into a Brooklyn regiment, and, after being seven 
months in a camp at Washington, he played a series of pranks 
on some of the officers, and got himself into great trouble, and 
Col. Adams recommended him to resign, and he came to me. 
Well, it broke my heart. I had but one. boy that was old 
enough to go, that I could offer to my country, and I told Theo- 
dore, who was in the oifice with me. He made the case his 
own. Mr. Tilton has a great deal in his upper nature. If he 
could be cut in two, and his lower nature separated from his 
upper, there is a great deal in his upper nature capable of great 
sweetness and beauty. At any rate, he took up my case. He 
suggested himself that the thing to do would be to get him 
transferred into the regular army. He said that he knew Sam 
Wilkeson, a correspondent of the Tribune, who was at that 
time in Washington, and had great influence, and that he would 
go right on that very night and secure this thing. He did, 
without a moment's delay, start and go to Washington, and he 
secured, through Sam Wilkeson, from Simon Cameron, then 
secretary of war, the appointment of Henry as second lieutenant 
in the fourth artillery service. I have felt ever since, that in 
the doing of that thing he did me a most royal service. I have 



460 BE PATIENT IN WELL DOING. 

felt it exquisitely and there has not been a time when I have 
done anything that hurt Tilton that that thing has not come 
back to me, and when it seemed as though I had in an hour of 
his need and trouble stepped aside and even helped to push him 
down. 

Q. — What was in your mind when 3^011 wrote these words, 
" When I saw you last I did not expect ever to see you again, 
or be alive many days?" A. — Just what I have stated in my 
statement already. Q. — Nothing else? A. — No. I know I 
frequently said, " I wish I were dead," and Theodore Tilton he 
came in and said he wished he was dead, and Moulton was 
frequently in a state in which he wished he was dead, and Mrs. 
Moulton said, " I am living among friends, every one of whom 
wishes he was dead," or something like that. I do not know 
but it was smarter than that, but she put it in a way that was 
very ludicrous. Eveiy one of us used to be echoing that ex- 
pression. We were vexed and plagued together, and I used 
the familiar phrase " I wish I were dead." 

Q. — The outside gossip is that you referred in that line to 
contemplated suicide. m 

Mr. Beecher — How do } r ou propose to cure the gossip? 

Mr. Winslow — I cannot say, but I want to know if anything 
of that kind was in jour mind ? A. — It was not. M} r general 
purpose in the matter of this whole thing was this : and I kept 
it as the motto of my life, by patient continuance in well doing 
to put to shame those who falsely accused me. Of course in 
my dismal moods I felt as though the earth had come to an 
end. Now, in interpreting these special letters everybody is 
irresistibly tempted to suppose that everything I said was said 
narrowly in regard to their text, instead of considering the 
foregoing state of my mind. Whereas nry utterances were 
largely to be interpreted \>y the past, as well as by the present 
or the future. I cannot interpret them precisely as I can a 
note of hand or a check. A man that is practical, a man that 
is oftentimes extravagant, a man that is subject to moods such 
as make me such as I am, can't narrowly measure his words. 

Q. — In view of all that has happened, what is your present 
feeling as to the conduct of Moulton. — his sincerity? A. — I 
have no views to express. 

Q. — Has Moulton sany secret of 3 T ours in papers, in documents, 
or a knowledge of an3 T act of 3-ours that 3 t ou would not have see 
the light in this house ? A. — Not that I am aware of 

Q. — Have 3 r ou any doubt? A. — I have none. 



REMORSE, FEAR, AND DESPAIR. 461 

Q. — Do 3 t ou now call upon him to produce all he has and tell 
all he knows ? A. — I do. 

By Mr. Cleveland — Have you reason, in the light of recent 
disclosures, to doubt his fidelity to you during those four years? 
A. — The impression made b}- him during the four years of 
friendship and fidelity was so strong that nry present surprise 
and indignation do not seem to rub it out. I am in that kind 
of divided consciousness that I was in respect to P^Jizabeth Til- 
ton, that she was a saint and chief of sinners, and Mr. Moulton's 
hold upon my confidence was so great that all that has come 
now affects me as a dream. 

By Mr. Winslow — In yowv letter of Feb. 5th, 1872, 3 t ou speak 
of the possibilit}' of a ruinous defense of you breaking out. 
How could there be any ruinous defense of you ? A. — A de- 
fense of me conducted by ignorant people, full of church zeal 
and personal partizan feeling, knowing nothing of the facts, 
and compelling this whole avalanche of mud to descend on the 
community, might have been ruinous. I think now as I then 
felt. 

Q. — You speak of remorse, fear and despair ? A. — I suppose 
I felt them all. Whether I was justified in so feeling is a ques- 
tion. When I lived in Indianapolis there was an old lawyer 
there named Calvin Fletcher, a New England man, of large 
brain, who stood at the head of the bar. He was a Methodist 
Christian man. He took a peculiar fancy to me, and he used 
to come and see me often when I was a young minister, and I 
would see him a great deal. He would make many admirable 
suggestions, one of which was that he never admitted anybody 
was to blame except the party who uttered the complaint. 
Says he, " I hold myself responsible for having eveiy bod} T do 
right by me, and if they do not do right, it is because I do not 
do my duty. And now," said he, " in preaching during your 
life do you take blame upon j'ourself, and don't you be scolding 
your church and blaming everybody. It is your business to see 
that your folks are right." Well, it sank down into nry heart 
and became a spring of influence from that da}^ to this. If my 
prayer meetings do not go right it is my fault. If the people 
do not come to church, I am the one to blame for their not 
coming. If things go wrong in m}* family, I find the reason in 
myself. I have foreseen quarrels in the church, and if I had 
left them alone the}' would burst and break out, but acting un- 
der the advice thus given, and doing my own duty I have had 
no difficulty in nry church. 



4G2 MET WOODHULL. 

As to his relations with Mrs. Woodhull Mr. Beecher ans- 
wered : — 

Q. Are you clear in your recollection that you never met the 
Woodhull more than three times? A. I am perfectly clear, 
that is, to speak to them. 

Q. State the times, the places. A. On one occasion I was 
-walking with Mr. Moulton in the general direction of Tilton's 
house, when he said that Mrs. Woodhull was going to be there. 
I at first hesitated, and he said come in and just see her. I 
said, very well. I went in, and after some conversation down 
in the parlor I went up stairs into the famous boudoir-room, 
where she sat waiting, and, like a spider to a fly, she rushed to 
me on my entrance and reached out both her hands with the 
utmost earnestness, and said how rejoiced she was to see me. 
I talked with her about five minutes and then went down stairs. 
My second interview with her was on an occasion when I had 
been with some twenty or thirty gentlemen to look at the ware- 
house establishment of W. Robinson. We were on the steamer 
that had been chartered for this occasion, and when I came up, 
Moulton said: "Come with me to town." He never told me 
there was to be any company. When I came there I learned 
there was to be something in New York in the evening, and 
that there were to be there a number of literary ladies, among 
whom was Mrs. Woodhull. I was placed at the head of the 
table near Mrs. Moulton, I think on her left. Mrs. Woodhull 
was next to me, or else she was first and I was next; I do not 
remember which. At that table she deigned to speak to me. 
I addressed a few words to her for politeness sake during the 
dinner, but there was no sort of enthusiasm between us. My 
third and last interview was at Mr. Moulton's house. She had 
addressed a letter to me saying that she would open all the 
scandal if I did not preside at Steinway Hall; and in reply to 
that Mr. Moulton advised that, instead of answering her letter, 
I should see her and say without witnesses what I had to say. 
She brought with her, her great subject. It was in type, and 
my policy was to let her talk, and say little, which I did; and 
she went on saying : " You know," " you believe," " so and 
so," and I said nothing, and so on from point to point, until I 
said at last: " Mrs. Woodhull, I do not understand your views. 
I have never read them thoroughly. As far as I do under- 
stand them I do not believe in them, and though I am in favor 
of free discussion, this presiding at meetings is a thing I sel- 



BED-ROOM 8CENE. 463 

dom ao for anybody, and I shall not do it for you, because I 
am not in sympathy with your movement. 

Q. Has Mrs. Woodhull any letters of yours in her possession? 
A. Two, I suppose, unless she has sold them. 

Q. Upon what subject? A. She inclosed a letter to me with 
one from my sister, Mrs. Isabella Hooker, inviting me to be 
present at the suffrage convention at Washington. To that 
letter I replied briefly in the negative, but made a few state- 
ments in respect to my ideas of woman's voting. The other 
letter was just before her scandalous publication. She wrote 
to me a winning letter, saying that her reformatory movements 
had brought upon her such odium that she could not procure 
lodgings in New York, and that she had been turned out of 
the Gilsey House, I think, and asking me, in a very significant 
way, to interpose my influence or some other relief for her. To 
that letter I replied very briefly, saying I regretted when any- 
body suffered persecution for the advocacy of their sincere 
views; but that I must decline to interfere. 

By Mr. Claflin — These are two letters, the signatures of 
which he showed to Mr. Bowen and myself. It was reported 
that by these letters you were to be sunk 40,000 fathoms deep. 
I told Bowen before I went there that I knew of the existence 
of letters, and that was all they contained. Mr. Bowen made 
the journey clear down from Connecticut on purpose to go up 
there. 

On other points the examination showed this result: — 

Q. Now as to what occurred in your library and in his bed- 
chamber. I refer to the occasion in which he said you touched 
his wife's ankle and were found with a flushed face in the bed- 
chamber of his house ? A. I do most emphatically deny that 
either of these scenes ever occurred. 

Q. Did you ever admit at any time to Mr. Moulton or Mr. 
Tilton, or to any other person, that you ever had any relations 
with Mrs. E. R. Tilton, or ever committed any act to or with 
her, or said any word to her which would be unfit for a Chris- 
tian man to hold, do or say with the wife of a friend; or for a 
father to hold, do or say with his daughter; or a brother with 
his sister? Did you ever admit this in any form, or in any 
words? A. Never. 

By Mr. Tracy — Q. Did you ever, in fact, hold any such rela- 
tions, do any such act or utter any such word? A. Never. 

By Mr. Cleveland — Q. In your statement you have alluded 



464 PAID MOULTON $7,000. 

to one payment of $5,000. Have you furnished any other 
money to those parties ? A. I have furnished at least $2,000 
beside the $5,000. 

Q. To whom did you pay that money? A. To Mr. Moulton. 

Q. In various sums? A. In various sums, partly in cash 
and partly in checks. 

Q. Have you any of those checks ? A. I have several. I 
-don't remember how many. 

Q. Where are they? A. I have some of them here. One of 
June 23d, 1871, drawn on the Mechanics' Bank to the order of 
Frank Moulton and indorsed in his handwriting, and one of 
May 29th, 1872, to the order of F. D. Moulton and also in- 
dorsed in his handwriting. Each of these that are marked 
"for deposit" across the face have been paid. 

Q. As nearly as you can recollect, how much money went 
into the hands of Mr. Moulton ? A. I should say I have paid 
$7,000. 

Q. To what use did you suppose that the money was to be 
appropriated ? A. I supposed that it was to be appropriated 
to extricate Mr. Tilton from his difficulties in some way. 

Q. You did not stop to inquire how or why? A. Mr. Moul- 
ton sometimes sent me a note saying, "I wish you would send 
me your check for so much." 

Q. Did you usually respond to the demands of Mr. Moulton 
for money during those months? A. I always did. 

Q. Under what circumstances did you come to pay the $5,000 
in one sum? A. Because it was represented to me that the 
whole difficulty could be now settled by that amount of money, 
which would put the affairs of the Golden Age on a secure 
footing ; that they would be able to go right on; that with the 
going on of them the safety of Tilton would be assured, and 
that would be the settlement of the whole thing. It was to 
save Tilton pecuniarily. 

Q. Were there any documents shown you by Moulton? and 
w T hat did he show you before you made the payments? A. It 
was the result of inclination and general statements, and I 
finally said to him: "I am willing to pay $5,000." I came to 
do it in this way: — There was a discussion about that paper. 
Mr. Moulton was constantly advancing money, as he said to 
me, to help Mr. Tilton. The paper was ready. One evening 
I was at his house. We were alone together in the back parlor, 
and Moulton took out of his pocket a letter from "Blank." 
It was read to me. In it the writer mentioned contributions 



MO ULTON FED IT ITT. 465 

which the writer had made to Theodore. I understood from 
him the writer of this letter had given him some thousands of 
dollars down in cash, and then taking out two checks or drafts, 
which, as I recollect, were on bluish paper, although I am not 
sure of that. There were two checks, each of them amounting 
to one or two thousand more, and I should think it amounted 
in all to about $G,000, although my memory about quantities 
and figures is to be taken with great allowance. But it pro- 
duced the impression on me that the writer had given him $1,- 
000 or $2,000 in cash down, and, as the writer explained in the 
letter, it was not convenient to give the balance in money at 
that time, but that the writer had drawn time drafts, which 
would be just as useful to him as money, and Mr. Moulton 
slapped the table and said that is what I call friendship, and I 
was stupid and said yes, it was. Afterward, when I got home, 
and thinking about it in the morning, "why," said J, what a 
fool ! I never dreamed what he meant." Then I went to him 
and said : " I am willing to make a contribution and put the 
thing beyond a controversy." Well, he said something like 
this: that he thought it would be the best investment that 
ever 1 made in my life. I then went to the Savings Bank and 
put a mortgage of $5,000 on my house. 1 took a check which 
was given me by the bank's lawyer, and put it into the bank, 
and on Moulton's suggestion that it would be better than to 
have a check drawn to his order, I drew the money in $500 or 
$1,000 bills, I have forgotten which, but I know that they were 
large, for I carried the roll in my hand, and these I gave into 
his hands. From time to time he spoke in the most glowing 
terms, and said he was feeding it out to Theodore, and he said 
that at the time of the first installment he gave Theodore $500 
at once, and that he sent with it a promissory note for Theo- 
dore to sign, but that Theodore did not sign it and sent it back, 
saying that he saw no prospect in the end of paying the loans, 
and that he could not honorably, therefore, expect them, and 
refused to sign any note, and Moulton laughed significantly 
and said that Tilton subsequently took the money without giv- 
ing any note. 

Q. Did you receive any note or security whatever, or evidence 
of debt, from Mr. Moulton, or has there been any offer to 
return the money to you ? A. Nothing of the kind. It was 
never expected to be returned by either party. 

Q. Has Moulton said anything to you about money in a 
comparatively recent period"? A. About the time of the pub- 
20* 



4:66 EE QUESTIONS BEECHER. 

lication of the Bacon letter, I think, I had been given to under- 
stand that he had offered $5,000 in gold to Mr. Tilton if he 
would not publish that letter, and that at the then stage of 
affairs Moulton felt profoundly that Tilton could not come 
out with a disclosure of all this matter without leaving Moul- 
ton in an awkward position, and that he offered $5,000 in gold 
if Tilton would not publish that letter. It led to some little 
conversation about a supply of money, and he said that I had 
better give him my whole fortune than have Tilton go on in 
his course. 

Q. That you had better give your whole fortune to Mr. Til- 
ton ? A. Yes, rather than have Tilton go into this fight. 

Q. Was that before or after the publication of the Bacon 
letter? A. I can't be certain. It was about that time. 

Q. Did Mr. Moulton ever question you in regard to this 
matter, whether you had ever spoken on that to any one, or 
expressed any anxiety in your mind about it? A. He did; 
not many weeks ago, among the last interviews I had with 
him. 

Q. Since the publication of that Bacon letter ? A. Yes; I 
think it was on the Sabbath day after the appointment of this 
Committee. I had preached bat once on that day, and on the 
afternoon of that day he saw me, and said to me in a conversa- 
tion : " You have never mentioned about that $5,000 ? " I said 
yes; I had to one or two persons; mentioned it to Oliver John- 
son for one, because he was saying something to me one day 
about what some of Tilton's friends were saying and I inciden- 
tally mentioned that to him, which he never repeated, I sup- 
pose to anybody. — Mr. Moulton said : " I will never admit that; 
I shall deny it always. 

Q. Have you any objections to state what Tilton's friends 
were saying to Oliver Johnson and others? what, did Oliver 
Johnson say to you ? A. On one occasion he reported to me 
that among the friends of Tilton he had heard reproaches 
made against me ; that I neither was endeavoring to help 
Theodore in reputation or in any other way, and that the ex- 
pression was this : That I had been the instrument of his be- 
ing thrown off the track in life, and that I would not reinstate 
him. I replied, in substance, that so far as reputation was 
concerned, I not only longed and tried to do what I could for 
Tilton, but that his association with the Woodhull was fatal 
to him, and I could not make any head against it. And with 
regard to the other, I said to him that I had been willing to 



GRACE, MERCY, AND PEACE. 467 

help him materially, and that recently I paid five thousand 
dollars to him. 

Q. Did you see and have a conversation with Tilton soon 
after the payment of the five thousand dollars ? A. On the 
Sunday morning following the payment of the five thousand 
dollars, as I was going to church in the morning, I met Mr 
Tilton standing right opposite the house. — He put his arm 
through mine and was in his most beatific mood. While walk- 
ing along down to the. church he was talking all the way of 
grace, mercy and peace to me, and at that time I recollect 
thinking that five thousand dollars is very mollifying. 

By Mr. Claflin — Q. Did you at any time receive the note 
which the Committee have in evidence, as follows : 

H. W. B. — Grace, mercy and peace. T. T. Sunday morning. 

A. Yes. He sent it on Sunday morning, by his wife, who 
had laid it on my pulpit stand. 

By Mr. Cleveland — If your mortgage was dated about May 
1st, 1873, the money was of course paid to Mr. Moulton after 
your mortgage was made ? A. Yes, sir. I did not keep the 
money an hour. I went with it directly from the Mechan- 
ics' Bank, where I drew it, and put it into Moulton's hands on 
the same day, and within a few days. 

Q. At his house? A. I do not know. 

Q. Here is a letter dated May 1st, 1874, in which Tilton re- 
fers to some story of Carpenter's about your offering money. 
Did you receive that letter ? A. I did, sir. It was a magnifi- 
cent humbug. I knew that Mr. Tilton knew that he had been 
tinkling my gold in his pockets for months and years, and he 
wrote that letter to be published for a sham and mask. 

Q. What did you understand by Carpenter's relations to the 
money matter? A. My first knowledge of Mr. Carpenter was 
that he was putting his nose into this business, which did not 
concern him. That was also Mr. Moulton's impression. I 
asked Moulton, one day, what under the sun is Carpenter 
doing around here and meddling with this matter ? He sum- 
marily damned him and represented him as a good-natured 
and well-meaning busy-body. I suggested, why didn't he tell 
him distinctly that his presence was not wanted? He said, 
"Well, he serves us some useful purpose. We hear of things 
going on in the clubs or any place in New York. We put Car- 
penter on the track, and he fetches all the rumors, and so we 
use him to find out what we could not get otherwise." And I 
did find that he not only did that, but that Mr. Carpenter was 



408 CARPENTER A BUSY-BODY. 

one of those good-natured men whose philanthropy exhibited 
itself in trying to settle quarrels and difficulties by picking up 
everything he could hear said by, for, or against a man, and 
carrying it to the parties where it would do the most harm 
possible. He was a kind of good-natured fool, and in all this 
matter he has been a tool more than a helper. He has never 
once done anything, except in the kindest way, and never once 
done anything in the whole of this matter, from beginning to 
end, that was not a stupid blunder. I made up my mind from 
the beginning that if I was silent to everybody in this matter, 
I would be especially silent to him (Carpenter). I recollect 
but one interview with him that had any particular signifi- 
cance. . He came to see me once when the Council was in ses- 
sion, and our document was published. There was a phrase 
introduced into it thatTilton thought pointed to him, and Til- 
ton, that night, was in a bonfire Uame and walked up and down 
the street with Moulton. I was in at Freeland's and in comes 
Carpenter with his dark and mysterious eyes. He sat down 
on the sofa, and in a kind of sepulchral whisper, told me of 
some matters. Says I, "That is all nonsense," that it meant 
" blank," and Carpenter was rejoiced to hear it, and then went 
out. On another occasion he came to me and in a great glow 
of benevolence said there was to be a newspaper established in 
New York, and that I was to take the editorship, and a half 
million was to be raised almost by the tap of a drum — I was 
amused, but said to him gravely: — "Well, Carpenter, if I 
should leave the pulpit, I think it very likely I should go into 
journalism. It would be more natural to me than anything 
else." That was the amount of the conversation. 

One other conversation I have some recollection of, in April 
last, and that Avas when Mr. Moulton had a plan on foot to buy 
the Golden Age of Tilton, and send him to Europe, and Car- 
penter came in and talked with me about it. I recollect very 
distinctly that conversation. My eyes were beginning to be 
enlightened. My education was beginning to tell on me a lit- 
tle, and I said to Mr. Carpenter, distinctly : "Mr. Carpenter, 
that is a matter which I can have nothing to do with. I don't 
know but that if Tilton wishes to go to Europe with his fam- 
ily, and live there for some time, that his friends would be 
willing to raise that amount of money, but that it is a matter 
you must talk with somebody else, and not with me." 

Q. Did you say that if Tilton printed his documents you 
would never ascend that pulpit again? A. I never said that, 



HE PROPOSED THE EUROPEAN JOURNEY. 4G9 

and I should never talk about the thing with such a weak man 
as he. 

Q. Who introduced the subject of going to Europe when 
Carpenter came to see you ? A. He did. 

The following are the letters referred to in the statement of 
Mr. Beecher. The first one was written by him to Mrs. Til- 
ton for the purpose of disposing her more kindly toward her 
husband and Mr. Moulton, whom she distrusted : 

Brookltn, Feb. 7th, 1871. 

My Dear Mrs. Tilton: — When I saw you last I did not expect ever 
to see you again or to be alive many days. God was kinder to me than 
were my own thoughts. The friend whom God sent to me, Mr. Moulton, 
has proved above all friends that ever I had, noble and willing to help me 
in this terrible emergency of my life. His hand it was that tied up the 
storm that was ready to burst upon our heads. I am not the less disposed 
to trust him from finding that he has your welfare most deeply and ten- 
derly at heart. You have no friend, Theodore excepted, who has it in 
his power to serve you so vitally, and who will do it with so much delicacy 
and honor. I beseech of you, if my wishes have yet any influence, let my 
deliberate judgment in this matter weigh with yours. It does my sore 
heart good to see in Mr. Moulton an unfeigned respect and honor for you. 
It would kill me if I thought otherwise. He will be as true a friend to 
your honor and happiness as a brother could be to a sister. In him we 
have a common ground on which you and I may meet. The past is 
ended, but is there not a future, no wiser, higher, holier future? May 
not this friend stand as a priest in the new sanctuary of reconciliation and 
mediate and bless you, Theodore and my most unhappy self. Do not let 
my earnestness fail of its end. You believe in my judgment. I have put 
myself wholly and gladly in Moulton's hands and there I must meet you. 
This is sent with Theodore's consent, but he has not read it. Will you 
return it to me by his hands ! I am very earnest in this wish, for all our 
sakes, for such a letter ought not to be subject to even a chance of mis- 
carriage. 

Your unhappy friend, 

II. W. Beecher. 

The same day he wrote as follows to Mr. Moulton :- 

February 7tii, 1871. 

My Dear Mr. Mottlton : — I am glad to send you a book which you 

will relish or which a man on a sick bed ought to relish. I wish I had 

more like it, and that I could send you one every day, not as a repayment 

of your great kindness to me, for that never can be paid ; not even by love, 



470 BEECHER DESPONDENT. 

which I give you freely. Many, many friends lias God raised up to me, 
but to no one of them has he ever given the opportunity and the wisdom 
so to serve me as you have. My trust in you is complete. You have also 
proved yourself Theodore's friend and Elizabeth's. Does God look down 
from heaven on three unhappy creatures that more need a friend than 
these? Is it not an intimation of God's intent of mercy to all that each 
one of these has in you a tried and proved friend, but only in you are we 
three united! Would to God, who orders all hearts, that by your kind 
mediation Theodore, Elizabeth, and I could be made friends again. 
Theodore, will have the hardest task in such a case, but has he not 
proved himself capable of the noblest things? I wonder if Elizabeth knows 
how generously he has carried himself towards me. Of course I can 
never speak with her again, except with his permission, and I do not 
know that even then it would be best. My earnest longing is to see her in 
the full sympathy of her nature at rest in him once more trusting her and 
loving her with even a better than the old love. I am always sad in such 
thoughts. Is there any way out of this night? May not a day star arise? 
Truly yours always, and with trust and love, 

Henry Ward Beecher. 

When Tilton and Monlton appeared to look upon Mr. 
Beecher as the author of all the trouble that had fallen upon 
the former, Mr. Beecher wrote the following letter to Mr. 
Monlton, from which Mr. Tilton gave extracts in his state- 
ment. 

Monday, Feb. 5th, 1872. 
My Dear Friend : — I leave town to-day and expect to pass through 
from Philadelphia to New Haven. Shall not be here until Friday. 
About three weeks ago I met T. in the cars going to B. We talked much. 
He told me to go on with my work, without the least anxiety in so far as 
his feelings and actions were the occasion of apprehensions. On return- 
ing home from New Haven, where I am three days in the week delivering 
a course of lectures to the theological students, I found a note from E., 
saying that T. felt hard towards me, or was going to see or write to me 
before leaving for the West. She kindly added, "Be not cast down. I 
bear this almost always, but the God in whom we trust will deliver us all 
safely. I know you do and are willing abundantly to help him, and I also 
know your embarrassments." There were added words of warning, but 
also of consolation, for I believe E. is beloved of God, and that her prayers 
for me are sooner heard than mine for myself or for her. But it seems 
that a change has come to T. since I saw him in the cars. Indeed, ever 
since he has felt more intensely the force of feeling in society and the 



HIS GREAT LABORS. 4 71 

humiliations which environ his enterprise. He has growingly felt that I 
had a power to help which I did not develop, and I believe that you have 
participated in the feeling. It is natural you should. T. is dearer to you 
than I can possibly be. He is with you. All his trials lie open to your 
eye daily. But I see you but seldom, and my personal relations, environ- 
ments, necessities, limitations, dangers and perplexities you cannot see or 
imagine. If I had not gone through this great year of sorrow, I would 
not have believed that any one could pass through my experience and be 
alive or sane. 

I have been the centre of three distinct circles, each of which require 
clear mindedness and peculiarly inventive or originative power, viz : First 
— The great Church; Second — The newspaper; Third — The book. The 
first I could neither get out of nor slight ; the sensitiveness of so many of 
my people would have made any appearance of trouble or any remission 
of force an occasion of alarm and notice and have excited where it was 
intended that rumors should die and everything be quiet. The newspaper 
I did roll off my mind, did but little except give general directions and in 
so doing I was continually spurred and exhorted by those in interest. It 
could not be helped. 

The "Life of Christ," long delayed, had locked up the capital of the 
firm, and was likely to sink them. Finished it must be. Was ever book 
born of such sorrow as that was? The interior history of it will never be 
written. During all this time you literally were all my stay and comfort. 
I should have failed on the way but for the courage which you inspired 
and the hope which you breathed. My vacation was profitable. I came 
back hoping that the bitterness of death was passed, but T's. troubles 
brought back the cloud with even severe sufferings. For all this fall and 
winter I have felt that you did not feel satisfied with me, and that I seemed 
both to you and T. as contenting myself with a cautious or sluggish policy, 
willing to save myself, but not to risk anything for T. I have again and 
again probed my heart to see whether I was truly liable to such feeling and 
the response is unequivocal that I am not. 

No man can see the difficulties then environing me, unless he stands 
where I do. To say that I have a church on my hands, is simple enough, 
but to have the hundreds and thousands of men present eyeing me, each 
one with his keen suspicion or anxiety, or zeal ; to see tendencies, which, 
if not stopped, would break out in a ruinous defence of me; to stop them 
without seeming to do it ; to prevent any one questioning me ; to meet and 
allay prejudices against T., which had their beginning years before his ; to 
keep serene, as I was not alarmed or disturbed ; to be cheerful at home 
and among friends, when I was suffering the torments of the damned ; to 
pass sleepless nights after, and yet to come up fresh and full for Sunday 



472 WILLING TO STEP DOWN AND 0TJ1. 

— all this may be talked about, but the real thing cannot be understood 
from the outside, nor its wearing and grinding on the nervous system. 

God knows I have put more thought and judgment and earnest desire 
into my efforts to prepare a way for T. and E. than ever I did for myself a 
hundredfold. As to the outside public, I have never lost an opportunity 
to soften prejudices, to refute falsehoods, and to excite a kindly feeling 
v among all whom I met. I am thrown among clergymen, public men and 
generally the makers of public opinion, and I have used every rational 
endeavor to repair the evils that have been visited upon T., and with 
increasing success, but the roots of this prejudice are long. 

The catastrophe which precipitated him from his .place only disclosed 
feelings that had existed long. Neither he nor you can be aware of the 
feelings of classes in society on other grounds than later rumors. I men- 
tion this to explain why I know with absolute certainty that no mere state- 
ment, letter, testimony or affirmation will reach the root of affairs and 
reinstate them. Time and work will, but chronic evils require chronic 
remedies. 

If my destruction would place him all right that shall not stand in the 
way. I am willing to step down and out. No one can offer more than 
that. That I do offer. Sacrifice me without hesitation if you can clearly 
see your way to happiness and safety thereby. I do not think that any- 
thing would be gained by it. I should be destroyed ; but he would not be 
saved. Elizabeth and the children would have their future clouded. In 
one point of view I could desire the sacrifice on your part* Nothing can 
possibly be so bad as the .horror of the great darkness in which I spend 
much of my time. 

I look upon death as sweeter-faced than any other friend I have in the 
world. Life would be pleasant if I could see that rebuilt which is scat- 
tered ; but to live on the sharp, ragged edge of anxiety, remorse, fear, 
despair, and yet to put on all appearances of serenity and happiness, can- 
not be endured much longer, I am well nigh discouraged. 

If you, too, cease to trust me, to love me, I am alone. I have not a 
another person in this world to whom I could go. Well, to God I com- 
mit all; whatever it may here, it shall be well there. With sincere 
gratitude for your heroic friendship, and with sincere affection, even 
though you love me not, I am yours though unknown to you. 

H. W. B. 

* The letter of Mrs. Tilton, which is here partly quoted, is as 
follows : — 

I leave for the West, Monday next. How glad I was to hear you were 
your own self on Sunday morning. Theodore's mind has been hard to- 



BEECHER TO MRS. TILTON. 473 

ward you of late, and I think he proposes an interview with you byword or 
note before leaving home. If so be not cast down. I fear this almost 
always, but the God in whom we trust will deliver all safely. I know you 
do and are abundantly willing to help him, and I also know your embarrass- 
ments. I anticipate my Western trip, where I may be alone with him, 
exceedingly. 

After the Woodliull story was published and while Mr. 
Tilton seemed really desirous for a short time of protecting 
his wife, Mr. Beecher sent through him the following letter to 
her : — 

My Dear Mrs. Tilton : — I hoped that you would be shielded from 
the knowledge of the great wrong that has been done to you and through 
you to universal womanhood. I can hardly bear to speak of it or allude 
to a matter than which nothing can well be more painful to a pure, 
womanly nature. I pray daily for you, that your faith fail not. You 
yourself know the way and the power of prayer. God has been your 
refuge in many a sorrow before. He will now hide you in His pavilion 
until the storm be overpast. The rain that beats down the flower to the 
earth will pass at length and the stem bent but not broken, will rise again 
and blossom as before. Every pure woman on earth will feel that this 
wanton and unprovoked assault is aimed at you, but reaches to universal 
womanhood. Meantime your dear children will love you witli double 
tenderness, and Theodore, at whom the shafts are hurled, will hide you in 
his heart of hearts. I am glad that revelation from the pit has given him 
a sight of the danger that was hidden by specious appearances and 
promises of usefulness, May God keep him in courage in the arduous 
struggle which he wages against adversity and bring him out though much 
tried, like gold seven times refined. I have not spoken of myself. No 
words could express the sharpness and depth of my sorrow in your behalf, 
my dear and honored friend. God walks in the fire by.the side of those He 
loves, and in Heaven neither you nor Theodore, nor I shall regret that 
discipline how hardsoever it may seem now. May He restrain and turn 
those poor creatures who have been given over to all this sorrowful harm 
to those who have deserved no such treatment at their hands. I commend 
you to my mother's God, my dear friend ; may His smile bring light in 
darkness, and His love perpetual summer to you. 
Very truly yours, 

Henry Ward Beecher. 

Mr. Beecher gives m full the letter written to Mr. Moulton 
after the unauthorized publication of the tripartite covenant, 



474: HE WILL WRITE TO THE PUBLIC. 

of which Mr. Tilton made garbled extracts. It is as follows : — 

Sunday Morning, June 1st, 1873. 

My Dear Frank : — The whole world is tranquil and the heaven is 
serene, as befits one who has about finished this world life, I could do 
nothing on Sunday. My head was confused, but a good sleep has made it 
like crystal. I have determined to make no more resistance. Theodore's 
temperament is such that the future, even if temporarily earned, would be 
absolutely worthless, filled with abrupt changes and rendering me liable at 
any hour of the day to be obliged to stultify all the devices by which we 
saved ourselves. It is only fair that he should know the publication 
of the card which he proposes, would leave him far worse off than before. 
The agreement was made after my letter through you was written. He 
had it a year. He had condoned his wife's fault. He had enjoined upon 
me with the utmost earnestness and solemnity not to betray his wife, nor 
leave his children to a blight. I had honestly and earnestly joined in the 
purpose. Then this settlement was made and signed by him. It was not 
my making. He revised his part so that it should wholly suit him, and 
signed it. It stood unquestioned and unblamed for more than a year. 
Then it was published. Nothing but that which he hid in private, when 
made public, excited him to fury, and he charged me with making him 
appear as one graciously pardoned by me. 

It was his own deliberate act, with which he was perfectly content, till 
others saw it, and then he charges a grievous wrong home on me. My 
mind is clear. I am not in haste. I shall write for the public a statement 
that will bear the light of the Judgment Hay. God will take care of me and 
mine. When I look on earth it is deep night; when I look to the heavens 
above I see the morning breaking ; but oh ! that I could put in golden 
letters my deep sense of your faithful, earnest, undying fidelity, your 
disinterested friendship. Your whole life, too, has been to me one of 
God's comforters. 

It is such as she that renews a waning faith in womanhood. Frank 
would not have wasted any more energy on a hopeless task with such a 
man as Theodore Tilton. There is no possible salvation for any who 
depend upon him. With a strong nature he does not know how to govern 
it; with generous impulses, the undercurrent that rules him is self; with 
ardent affections, he cannot love long that which does not repay him with 
admiration and praise ; with a strong theatric nature, he is constantly 
imposed upon with the idea that a position, a great stroke, a coup d'etat is 
the way to successs. Besides these he has abundant good things about 
him, but these traits are made absolutely unreliable. Therefore there is no 
use in further trying, j 



GOD WILL PROTECT HIM. 475 

I have a strong feeling upon me, and it brings great peace with it, that I 
am spending my last Sunday, and preaching my last sermon. Dear God, 
I thank Thee. I am indeed beginning to see rest and triumph. The pain 
of life is but a moment, the glory of the everlasting emancipation is 
wordless, inconceivable, full of becoming glory. Oh, my beloved Frank, 
I shall know you there and forever hold fellowship with you, and look 
back and smile at the past. Your loving 

H. "W. Beeciier. 

To this letter it will be remembered Mr. Moulton wrote a 
reply in Mr. Beecher's presence. It is in the following 
words : — 

My Dear Friend : — Your letter make this first Sabbath of summer 
dark and cold like a vault, You have never inspired me with courage or 
hope, and if I had listened to you alone, my hands would have dropped 
helpless long ago. You don't begin to be in the danger to-day that has 
faced you many times before. If you now look it square in the eyes, it 
will cower and sink away again. You know that I have never been in 
sympathy with, but that I absolutely abhor the unmanly mood out of which 
your letter of this morning came. This mood is a reservoir of mildew, 
you can stand it if the whole case were published to-morrow. In my 
opinion it shows only a selfish faith in God to go willing into heaven if you 
could, with a truth that you are not courageous enough, with God's help 
and faith in God, to try to live on earth. You know that I love you ; and 
because I do I shall try, and try, and try, as in the past. You are mis- 
taken when you say that " T. charges you with making him appear as one 
graciously pardoned by you." He said the form in which it was published 
in some of the papers made it so appear ; and it was from this that he 
asked relief. I do not think it impossible to frame a reply which will cover 
the case. May God bless you. I know He will protect you. 

Yours, 

Frank. 

That Mr. Beecher's defence gave a plausible explanation of 
the scandal, the public generally admitted, but there were 
many, very many, who could not accept a mere sipiple state- 
ment like this as of more weight than the affidavit of Tilton, 
the explicit charges of Moulton, and the declarations of Car- 
penter. The people of Plymouth church, however, accepted it 
as a complete vindication of their beloved pastor, and on the 



476 A CALL ON THE PASTOR. 

evening of its publication a meeting was held in Plymouth 
church, devoted to prayer and praise to God for the delivery of 
the accused from the hands of his enemies. It was a Jubilee 
in fact, in which many of the lights of the Congregation 
poured out their souls in prayer. At the business meeting 
that followed, a resolution Avas adopted requesting the exam- 
ining Committee to report " at as qarly a day as is consistent 
with truth and justice." When the proceedings in the church 
had closed the congregation, by invitation of Rev. Mr. Halli- 
day, assistant pastor, repaired to the pastor's residence. The 
scene that ensued is thus described by a reporter: — 

The first to arrive at Mr. Beecher's house was an old member 
of the church, and one between whom and the pastor there 
exists a strong affection. Mr. Beecher was lounging in care- 
less ease on the front stoop, his head throAvn back on the door. 
As the gentleman approached Mr. Beecher glanced up with a 
flush of satisfaction on his countenance. 

" What, have you come to see me," Mr. Beecher said in a joc- 
ular tone. 

" Why not, Mr. Beecher ? " returned the equally delighted 
gentleman. 

"Oh I didn't know," said Mr. Beecher, smiling, " that you 
cared to have anything to do with me," and then he rose and 
strained his friend to his arms. 

"There'll be a thousand more here in a minute, Mr. 
Beecher." 

" Come in," said the dominie " I'm ready for them," and he 
led the way into the library. Mrs. Beecher and Captain 
Beecher were there. The door was wide open. In a moment 
the people began streaming in. They came in with a rush, a 
crush, and a bustle. It looked as if they were going to fill the 
house from roof to cellar. Mr. Beecher, with a countenance 
lighted with joy, but with eyes filling with tears, stood with 
Mrs. Beecher in the centre of the room. A dozen hands were 
outreachfd to him at once. He took as many of them as he 
could conveniently hold, right and left. The ladies went up 
to Mrs. Beecher and kissed her. She was powerfully affected 
and could scarcely return their kind attentions. There was a 
flood of congratulations poured upon the pastor and his wife, 
sympathy, love and confidence was expressed on every side. 



TILTON REJOINS. 477 

Mr. Beecher's fatigue seemed to wear away under the kind- 
nesses of his friends. There were not only Plymouth people, 
but many strangers. They alike felt the warmth of the preach- 
er's hands, and shared in his cheery words. To one, a stranger 
who was profuse in his expressions of regard, Mr. Beecher 
said : " Yes, I have had a severe trial, but I have tried to bear 
it patiently, conscious of my integrity." Allusion was made 
to his assailants, when he said : "I have been sadly deceived in 
those whom I implicitly trusted/' 

The public now looked for every utterance from Messrs. 
Moulton and Tilton, with great anxiety. Mr. Moulton sud- 
denly disappeared from the city and reappeared at Portland, 
Maine, but the week, pregnant with anxiety and excitement, 
closed without any response from "Our Mutual Friend " to 
the damaging charge of blackmailing his pastor. Not so with 
Mr. Tilton. To a reporter of the Herald he took occasion to 
declare as follows : — 

" I think," replied Mr. Tilton, u that probably nowhere else 
in the civilized world was there a more dastardly act commit- 
ted than yesterday — no, not by any member of the human 
race — than Henry Ward Beecher's attack on Frank Moulton 
as a blackmailer. Mr. Moulton is rich enough to pay Mr. 
Beecher's salary as a bagatelle. He is, moreover, the most 
faithful friend that Mr. Beecher ever had, or ever will have 
again, though he should live to be a hundred years old. Frank 
Moul ton's services to that man — the way he has put a shield 
over him and guarded him, year by year, for the last four 
years, from the exposure of his guilty secret — the zeal and care 
with which he has striven to keep public ruin from overtaking 
him in the pulpit, and disgrace from shadowing his children 
and grandchildren — services like these are rarely rendered by 
one man to another, and I know of no instance of such base- 
ness of ingratitude as the desperate minister of Plymouth 
church has exhibited in thus striking a man, whose shoe 
latchet he is unworthy to unloose. I care nothing for this piti- 
ful pretext of blackmailing, except so far as it affects Mr. 
Moulton — if it can affect him at all, which it will not, for he 
is too proud a man to be wounded by such a stab — he will 
simply be filled with scorn. So far as I myself am concerned, 
the only money which I know of Mr. Beecher's paying is in a 
case which is one of the many proofs of his guilt. A young 



478 CONVERSA TION VERHEARD. 

girl, a servant in my house, overheard, four years ago, a conver- 
sation between Mrs. Tilton and me concerning her intimacy 
with Mr. Beecher. This conversation was repeated by the 
listener to the family relatives and to some friends. Her dis- 
position to repeat the story was dangerous for the actors in it, 
and accordingly it was deemed best to send her to the West to 
a boarding school. She remained there three years, and the 
bills were paid by Mr. Beecher. Perhaps he regards this as 
blackmail. As to his contributing money to the Golden Age, 
it is the first time that any person connected with the Golden 
Age has ever heard of it. If the capital of that paper, which 
a number of friends made up, contained a secret and silent 
contribution from Henry Ward Beecher the knowledge of that 
fact was carefully withheld from me and my associates in that 
journal. If Mr. Beecher did contribute this money unbeknown 
tome, and if he procured it by a mortgage on his house, or in 
any other difficult way, then this fact alone, without any other 
evidence added, is enough to convict him of every charge that 
I have made. Mr. Beecher's crime against me and mine was 
enough of a sin to answer for, but in adding to this baseness 
his audacious and desperate attacks on Mr. Moulton'and Mr. 
Carpenter as blackmailers, to say nothing of myself, whom he 
includes in the accusation, he bids fair to sink as low as he 
once stood high." 




FRANK MOULTON, 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



TELLS ALL HE KNOWS. — MR. BEECHER AND MRS. TILTON HAD 
ADMITTED TO HIM THEIR ACTS OP ADULTERY. — BOWEN'S 
MACHINATIONS. — ELIZABETH'S CONFESSION, RETRACTION, 
AND ADMISSION THAT SHE IS INCAPABLE OF UTTERING THE 
TRUTH. — HOW BEECHER USED MOULTON TO COVER HIS 
TRACKS. — ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER'S PREE LOVE FAN- 
CIES. — REV. THOS. K. BEECHER SEES NO HOPE FOR HENRY, 
AND EXCLAIMS : " HANDS OFF UNTIL HE IS DOWN." — A FEAR- 
FUL PICTURE OF LYING, PREVARICATION, AND PLOTTING. 

THE BLACKMAIL STORY EXPLODED. — PLYMOUTH CHURCH 
DRIVEN INTO SILENCE. 

"TTTHEN" the events recorded in the last chapter had been 
* » made public, and the people had learned that Mutual 
Friend Moulton had returned to the city, and was preparing a 
statement in defence of himself, additional interest centered 
in the case. The press of the country, with few exceptions, 
had accepted Mr. Beecher's defence as an earnest of his inno- 
cence of adultery. The change in public sentiment gave cour- 
age to the Plymouth Church Committee and lawyers, and it 
was semi-officially announced that on Friday night, the 21st of 
August the Committee would report to the Church a vindica- 
tion of their pastor. "The best laid plans of mice and men" 
etc., were disarranged when it became mooted about that 
Moulton's supplementary statement that the Committee had 
suppressed, would appear in the Daily Graphic of that after- 

479 



4S0 GREAT EXCITEMENT. 

noon. The Committee were alarmed, for they knew that the 
publication of Moulton's statement would render a vindication 
of Mr. Beecher on the evicle?ice, impossible. The Committee 
consequently met and adjourned, after deciding upon the post- 
ponement of the presentation of their report in vindication of 
Henry Ward Beecher. The first edition of the Graphic ap- 
peared at noon, containing several pages of fac similes of letters 
very damaging to the pastor, and the announcement that the 
half past two o'clock edition would contain an exclusive copy 
of Moulton's statement. Excitement ran high. Orders for 
extra copies poured in from all quarters ; newsboys were alive 
to the importance of the document, and when the hour arrived 
for the appearance of the extra, the scene about the office of 
the Graphic and its branches reminded one of war times. An 
immense number was sold, and on the following day a special 
edition was put to press to supply the demand for orders of the 
previous day that the publishers were unable to fill. Many of 
the other evening journals issued extras made up from the 
Graphic, to whom the document was given exclusively by Mr. 
Moulton. 

The following is the letter of Mr. Moulton, issued as a pref- 
ace to the statement he had supplied to the Committee, days 
before, and which they had suppressed: — ■ 

To the Public : — I became a party almost accidentally in the unhappy 
controversy between Mr. Beecher and Mr, Tilton. I had been a friend of 
Mr. Tilton since my boyhood, and for Mr. Beecher I had always enter- 
tained the warmest admiration. 

In 1870 I learned for the first time that Mr. Beecher had given Mr. Til- 
ton so grave a cause of offence that if the truth should be made public a 
great national calamity would ensue- I believed that the scandal would 
tend to undermine the very foundations of social order, to lay Iowa benefi- 
cent power for good in our country, and blast the prospects and blight the 
family of one of the most brilliant and promising of the rising men of the 
generation. This disaster — as I deemed it and still regard it — I determined 
to try and avert. 

For nearly four years I have labored most assiduously to save both of 
these men from the consequences of their acts, whether of unwisdom or 



MOULTON TO THE PUBLIC. 481 

passion— acts which have already seriously involved them in a needless 
and disastrous quarrel, which is made the pretext of pouring on the com- 
munity a flood of impurity and scandal deeply aflect ng their own families, 
and threatening like a whirlpool, if not stifled, to draw into its vortex the 
peace of mind and good repute of a host of others. More than all, I saw 
that, because of the "transgression of another," innocent children would 
be burdened with a load of obloquy which would weigh most heavily and 
cruelly on their young lives. 

All these considerations determined me to take an active part in the 
transactions which have since become so notorious. 

This decision involved me in great anxiety and labor, for which the hope 
of saving these interests could be my only compensation. Even that re- 
ward has now failed me, and instead of it an attempt is made to throw on 
me a part of the shame and disgrace which belongs to the actors alone. 

One of them, whom 1 have zealously endeavored to serve, has seen fit, 
with all the power of his vast influence and matchless art as a writer, to 
visit on me the penalties of his own wrong doing, at the same time publicly 
appealing to me to make known the truth, as if it would justify his attack 
on me. 

I feel that the fdlure of my exertions has not been owing to any fault of 
mine. I worked faithfully and sincerely, under the almost daily advice 
and direction of Mr. Beecher, with his fullest approbation, confidence and 
beaming gratitude, until, as 1 think, in an evil hour for him, he took other 
advisers. I have failed, and now, strangely enough, he seems to desire to 
punish me for the sad consequences of the folly, insincerity and wicked- 
ness of his present counselors. 

Mr. Beecher, in his statement, testifies that he brought on this investiga- 
tion without my knowledge or advice. 

Even while mourning what seemed to me the utter unwisdom of this 
proceeding, I have done all I could honorably do to avert this catastrophe. 
I have kept silent, although I saw with sorrow that this silence was deeply 
injuring the friend of my boyhood. 

Prompted by a sense of duty— not to one only but to all the parties in- 
volved — I denied the united and public appeals made to me by Mr. Beech- 
er and Mr. Tilton to produce the evidence in my possession ; partly 
because I felt that the injury thereby done to Mr. Tilton was far less 
calamitous than the destruction which must come on all the interests I had 
for years tried to conserve, and especially on Mr. Beecher himself, if I 
(Should comply with this request. 

But I stated clearly that in one emergency I should speak — namely, in 
defence of my own integrity of action if it should be wantonly assailed. 

21 



482 THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, ETC. 

I left Mr. Beecher untrammeled by the facts in my hands, to defend 
himself, without the necessity of attacking me. 

By the published accusations of Mr. Beecher affecting my character, my 
own self-respect, the advice of friends and public justice make it impera- 
tive that "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" should 
now be fully declared. 

I give to the public, therefore, the statement I had prepared to bring be- 
fore the committee, without the alteration or addition of a sentence and 
scarcely a word — certainly without the change of a single syllable — since 
I read Mr. Beecher's statement and evidence, or because of it. 

This paper I withdrew from the committee when before it in a last 
despairing effort for peace, at the earnest solicitation of some of Mr. 
Beecher's friends, and with the approval also of some of the most valued 
of my own. 

I do not now give it to the committee, but to the public, because its pro- 
duction concerns myself rather than the principals in the strife. It is 
made for my own protection against public accusation and not to aid either 
party to the controversy. 

For the needless and cruel necessity that now so imperatively compels 
its production I have the most profound grief — for which there is but a 
single alleviation — namely, that the disclosure of the facts at this time can 
scarcely work more harm to him whom I at first tried to befriend by with- 
holding them from the public, than they would have caused him in January, 
1871, when, but for my interference, the public most assuredly would have 
been put in possession of the whole truth. 

This publication, to which Mr. Beecher forces me renders fruitless four 
years of constant and sincere efforts to save him. It leaves him and Mrs. 
Tilton in almost the same position in which I found them, excepting in so 
far as their own late disingenuous untruthfulness in their solemn state- 
ments may lower them in the estimation of the world. 

I reserve to myself the right hereafter to review the statements of Mr. 
Beecher in contrast with the facts as shown by the documents herewith 
subjoined and others which I have at my hand — the production of which 
did not seem to be necessary until some portion of the published evidence 
of Mr. Beecher demanded contradiction. 

FRANCIS D. MOULTON. 

STATEMENT OF FRANCIS D. MOULTON. 

Gentlemen of the Committee: — I need not repeat to you 
my great, very great sorrow to feel obliged to answer your in- 
vitation, and, with the permission of the parties, to put before 



MOULTON'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH B. & T. 4S3 

you the exact facts which have been committed to me or come 
to my knowledge in the unhappy affair under investigation. 
In so doing I shall use no words of characterization of any of 
them or of inculpation of the parties, nor shall I attempt to 
ascribe motives, save when necessary to exactly state the fact, 
leaving the occurrences, their acts of omission and commission, 
to be interpreted by themselves. In giving conversations or 
narrative I, of course, can in most cases give only the sub- 
stance of the first and will attempt to give words only when 
they so impress themselves upon my mind as to remain in my 
memory, and of the latter only so much as seems to me ma- 
terial. 

I have known Mr. Theodore Tilton since 1850 intimately, in 
the kindest relations of social and personal friendship. I have 
known Rev. Henry Ward Beecher since 18G9, and then casually 
as an acquaintance and an attendant upon his ministrations 
up to the beginning of the occurrences of which I shall 
speak. 

Since Mr. Tilton's valedictory, as editor of the Independent, 
on the 22d of December, 1870, I inferred that there had been 
some differences between himself and Mr. Henry C. Bowen, 
the proprietor, but learning that Tilton had been retained as 
contributor to that journal and editor of the Brooklyn Union, 
of which Bowen was also proprietor, I supposed that the dif- 
ferences were not personal, or unkind. Up to that time, al- 
though I had been a frequent visitor at Tilton's house and had 
seen himself and Mrs. Tilton under all the phases of social 
intercourse, I had never heard or known of the slightest dis- 
agreement or unkindness existing between them, but had be- 
lieved their marital relations were almost unexceptionally 
pleasant. On the 26th of December, 1870, being at Mr. Til- 
ton's house, he came home from an interview with Mr. Bowen, 
and told me with some excitement of manner that he had just 
had a conference with Bowen, and that in that interview 
Bowen had made certain accusations against Beecher, and had 
challenged him (Tilton), as a matter of duty to the public, to 
write an open letter, which Bowen was to take to Beecher, of 
which he showed me the original draft, which is as follows : — 

[FIRST DRAFT — MARKED " A."] 

December 2Gth, 1870 — Brooklyn. 
Henry Ward Beecher : — 

Sir : — I demand, that for the reasons which you explicitly understand, 



484 TILTON'S LETTER TO BEECHER. 

you immediately cease from the ministry of Plymouth Church, and that 
you quit the city of Brooklyn as a residence. 

(Signed) Theodore Tilton, 

Tilton explained that the words ( ' for reasons which you ex- 
plicitly understand" were interlined at the request of JBowen, 
and he further stated that he told Bowen that he was prepared 
"to believe his charges because Beecher had made improper ad- 
vances to Mrs. Tilton. Surprised at this I asked him, 
" What ? " when he replied, " Don't ask me ; I can't tell you." 
I then said, " Is it possible you could have been so foolish as to 
sign that letter on the strength of Bowen's assertion and not 
have Bowen sign it too, although, as you say, he was to carry 
it to Beecher ? " He answered, " Mr. Bowen gave me his word 
that he would sustain the charges and adduce the evidence to 
prove them whenever called upon." I said, " I fear you will 
find yourself mistaken. Has the letter gone ?" He answered, 
"Bowen said he would take it immediately." I afterwards 
learned from Beecher that Bowen had done so, because 
on the 1st of January following Beecher gave me the 
copy he received, as I find by a memorandum made at the time 
on the envelope, and I find by a later memorandum on the 
envelope that the original draft was given to me by Tilton on 
the 5th of the same month. I insert here the following mem- 
orandum of the facts above stated, made at the time, giving 
the hour when it was made : — 

Brooklyn, Dec. 26th, 1870. 

Theodore Tilton informed me to-day that he had sent a note to Mr. 
Beecher, of which Mr. II. C. Bowen was the bearer, demanding that he 
(Beecher) should retire from the pulpit and quit the city of Brooklyn. 
The letter was an open one. II. C. Bowen knew the contents of it, and 
said that he (Bowen) would sustain Tilton in this demand. 

3.45 P. M. 

In a day or two after that Mr. Tilton called on me at my 
house and said that he had sent word to Bowen that he was 
going to call on Beecher within half an hour or shortly ; that 
Bowen came up into the office with great anger and told him 
if he should say to Beecher what he (Bowen) had told him 
concerning his (Beecher's) adulteries he would dismiss him 
from the Independent and the Union. Tilton told him that 
he had never been influenced by threats and he would not be 
in the present case, and he subsequently received Bowen's note 
of dismissal. 



TILTON TO BOWEN. 4$5 

What those charges were and the account of the interview 
will appear in the following letter addressed to Bowen by Til- 
ton, bearing date the 1st of January, 1871, which also gives in 
more substance and more detail what Tilton had said to me 
in the two conversations which I have mentioned : — 

Brooklyn, Jan. 1st, 1871. 
Mr. Henry C. Bowkn : — 

Sir — I received last evening your sudden notice breaking my two con- 
tracts — one with the Independent, the other with the Brooklyn Union. 

With reference to this act of yours I will make a plain statement of facts. 

It was during the early part of the rebellion (if I recollect aright) when 
you fir^t intimated to me that the Rev. Henry Ward Beechor had com- 
mitted acts of adultery for which, if you should expose him, he would be 
driven from his pulpit. From that time onward your references to this 
subject were frequent, and always accompanied with the exhibition of a 
deep-seated injury to your heart. 

In a letter which you addressed to me from Woodstock, June 16th, 1868, 
referring to this subject, you said : — " I sometimes feel that I must break 
silence, that I must no longer sutler as a dumb man, and be made to bear 
a load of grief most unjustly. One word from me would make a revolution 
throughout Christendom, I had almost said — and you know it. * * * 
You have just a little of the evidence from the great volume in my 
possession. * * * I am not pursuing a phantom, but solemnly brood- 
ing over an awful reality." 

The underscorings in this extract are your own. Subsequently to the 
date of this letter, and at frequent intervals from then till now, you have 
repeated the statement that you could at any moment expel Henry Ward 
Beecher from Brooklyn. You have reiterated the same thing not only to 
me but to others. 

Moreover, during the year just closed your allusions to the subject were 
uttered with more feeling than heretofore, and were not unfrequently 
coupled with your emphatic declaration that Mr. Beecher ought not to be 
allowed to occupy a public position as a Christian preacher and teacher. 

On the 26th, of December, 1870, at an interview in your house at which 
Mr. Oliver Johnson and I were present, you spoke freely and indignantly 
against Mr. Beecher as an unsafe visitor among the families of his congre- 
gation. You alluded by name to a woman, now a widow, whose husband's 
death you have no doubt was hastened by his knowledge that Mr. 
Beecher had maintained with her an improper intimacy. You avowed 
your knowledge of several other cases of Mr, Beecher's adulteries. More- 
over, as if to leave no doubt on the mind of either Mr. Johnson or myself, 



486 CONTRACT BROKEN. 

you informed us that Mr. Beecher had made to you a confession of his 
guilt, and had with tears implored your forgiveness. After Mr. Johnson 
retired from this interview you related to me the the case of a woman 
whom you said (as nearly as I can recall your words) that * * 

During your recital of the tale you were full of anger toward Mr. 
Beecher, You said with terrible emphasis, that he ought not to remain a 
"week longer in his pulpit. You immediately suggested that a demand 
should be made upon him to quit his sacred office. You volunteered to 
bear to him such a demand in the form of an open letter, which you would 
present to him with your own hand and you pledged yourself to sustain the 
demand which this letter should make — namely, that he should for reasons 
which he explicitly knew, immediately cease from his ministry of Plymouth 
Church and retire from Brooklyn. 

The first draft of the letter did not contain the phrase "for reasons 
which he explicitly knew," and these words (or worJs to this effect) were 
incorporated in a second, at your motion. You urged furthermore (and 
very emphatically) that the letter should demand not only Mr. Beecher's 
abdication of his pulpit, but cessation of his writing for the Christian 
Union, a point on which you were overruled. This letter you presented 
to Mr. Beecher at Mr. Freeland's house. Shortly after its presentation you 
sought an interview with me in the editorial office of the Brooklyn Union, 
during which, with unaccountable emotion in your manner, your face livid 
with rage, you threatened with a loud voice that if ever I should inform 
Mr. Beecher of the statements which you had made concerning his adultery, 
or should compel you to adduce the evidence on which you agreed to sus- 
tain the demand for Mr. Beecher's withdrawal from Brooklyn, you would 
immediately deprive me of my engagement to write for the Independent 
and to edit the Brooklyn Union, and that in case 1 should ever attempt to 
enter the offices of those journals you would have me ejected by force. I 
told you that I should inform Mr. Beecher or anybody else, according to 
the dictate of my judgment, uninfluenced by any threat from- my employer. 
You then excitedly retired from my presence. Hardly had your violent 
words ceased ringing in my ears when I received your summary notices 
breaking my contracts with the Independent and the Brooklyn Union. To 
the foregoing narrative of facts 1 have only to add my surprise and regret 
at the sudden interruption, by your own act, of what has been on my part 
towards you, a faithful friendship of fifteen years. 

Truly yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 

In this letter I have omitted the sentence quoted as the 



MOULTON'S STATEMENT. 4S7 

words of Mr. Bowen, after the words, " as nearly as I can re- 
call your words, that" — simply desiring to say that it contained 
a charge of rape, or something very nearly like ravishment, of 
a woman other than Mrs. Tilton, told in words that are unfit 
to be spread upon the record, but, if desired, the original is for 
the inspection of the committee. 

On Friday evening, the 30th of December, being the night 
of the Plymouth Church prayer meeting, Tilton came to me 
and said, in substance, that by his wife's request he had deter- 
mined to see Beecher, in order to show to Beecher a confession 
of his wife of the intercourse between them, which he (Tilton) 
had never up to that time mentioned to him (Beecher), and 
the fact of the confession, of which his wife had told him that 
she had never told Beecher, although her confession had been 
made in July previous in writing, which writing he (Tilton) 
had afterwards destroyed ; but that his wife, fearing that, if 
the Bowen accusations against Beecher were made public, the 
whole matter would be known and her own conduct with 
Beecher become exposed, had renewed her confession in her 
own handwriting, which he handed to me to read, which was 
the first knowledge I had of its existence. 

Tilton did not tell me how his wife came to make the con- 
fession in July, nor did I at that time or ever after ask. In- 
deed, I may state here, once for all, that I refrained from ask- 
ing confessions of the acts of all the parties further than they 
chose to make them to me voluntarily for the purpose for 
which I was acting, 

Tilton wanted me to go down and ask Beecher to come up 
and see him at my house, which I did. I said to Mr. Beecher, 
" Mr. Tilton wants you to come and see him at my house im- 
mediately." lie asked, " What for ?" I replied, "He wants 
to make some statement to you in reference to your relations 
with his family." He then called to some one in the back 
room to go down and say that he should not be at the prayer 
meeting, and we went out together. 

It was storming at the time, when he remarked, " There is 
an appropriateness in this storm," and asked me, " What can 
I do ? What can I do ?" I said, " Mr. Beecher, I am not a 
Christian, but if you wish I will show you how Avell a heathen 
can serve you." We then went to my house, and I showed 
him into the chamber over the parlor, where Mr. Tilton was, 
and left them together. In about an hour Mr. Beecher came 
down and asked me if 1 had seen the confession of Elizabeth. 



488 BEECHEB GETS THE RETRACTION. 

I said I had. Says he, ' This will kill me," and asked me to 
walk out with him. I did so, and we walked to Mr. Tilton's 
house together, and he went in. On the way he said, " This 
is a terrible catastrophe ; it comes upon me as if struck by 
lightning." 

He went into Tilton's house and I returned home. Within 
an hour he returned to my house, and we left my house again 
together and I walked with him to his house. Tilton remained 
at my house while Beecher was absent at Tilton's house, and 
when he returned there was no conversation between them. 
When we arrived at Beecher's house he wanted me to standby 
him in this emergency, and procure a reconciliation if possible. 
I told him I would, because the interests of women, children 
and families were involved, if for no other reason. That ended 
the interview that night. During this evening nothing was 
said by Mr. Beecher as to the truth or falsity of Mrs. Tilton's 
confession, nor did he inform me that he had obtained from 
her any recantation of the confession, which I afterwards 
learned he had done. 

I returned to my house and had some conversation with 
Tilton, in which he told me that he had recited to Beecher the 
details of the confession of his wife's adulteries, and the re- 
mark which Beecher made was, " This is all a dream, Theo- 
dore," and that that was all the answer that Beecher made to 
him. I then advised Tilton that for the sake of his wife and 
family and for the sake of Beecher's family, the matter should 
be kept quiet and hushed up. The next morning, as I was 
leaving home for business, Tilton came to my house and with 
great anger said that Beecher had done a mean act ; that he 
had gone from that interview of last night to his house and 
procured from Elizabeth a recantation and retraction of her 
confession. He said, for that act he would smite, him ; that 
there could be no peace. He said, "You see that what I have 
told you of the meanness of that man is now evident." Til- 
ton said that Beecher, at the interview of List night, had asked 
his permission to go and see Elizabeth, and he told him he might 
go, which statement was confirmed by Beecher himself, and 
Beecher left him for that purpose. I said to Tilton, " Now, 
don't get angry ; let us see if even this cannot be arranged. I 
will go down and get that retraction from him." 

I was then going to my business, so that I was unable to go 
that morning, but went that evening, saw Beecher, and told 
him that I thought he had been doing a very mean and treach- 



GETS BACK HIS CONFESSION. 489 

erons act — treacherous, first toward me, from whom lie wanted 
help, in that he did not tell me on our way to his house last 
night what he had procured from Mrs. Tilton, and that he 
could not expect my friendship in this matter unless he acted 
truthfully and honorably toward me. I further said : " Mr. 
Beecher, you have had criminal intercourse with Mrs. Tilton ; 
you have ch>n" great injury to Tilton otherwise. Now, when 
you are confronted with it, you ask permission of the man to 
again visit his house, and you get from that woman who has 
confessed you have ruined her, a recantation and retraction of 
the truth for your mere personal safety. That won't save 

At that interview he admitted with grief and sorrow the 
fact of his sexual relations with Mrs. Tilton, expressed some 
indignation that she had not told her husband, and that in 
consequence of being in ignorance of that fact he had been 
walking upon a volcano — referring to what he had done in 
connection with Bowen and with reference to Tilton's family. 
He said that he had sympathized with Bowen, and had taken 
sides with him as against Tilton, in consequence of stories 
which were in circulation in regard to him, and especially of 
one specific case where he had improper relations with a wo- 
man whom he named, and to whom a letter from his wife will 
make a part of this statement, and had so stated to Bowen. 
And he told me that he would write to Bowen and withdraw 
those charges, and gave me the rough draft of a letter which 
he wrote and sent to Bowen, which letter is here produced, 
marked " C." :— 

Brooklyn, Jan. 2d, 1871. 

My Dear Mr. Bowen : — Since I saw you last Tuesday, I have reason 
to think that the only cases of which I spoke to you in regard to Mr. 
Tilton were exaggerated in heing reported to me, an.l I should be unwilling 
to have anything I said, though it was but a little, weigh on your mind in a 
matter so important to his welfare. 1 am informed by one whose judgment 
and integrity I greatly rely, and who has the means of forming an opinion 

better than any of us, that he knows the whole matter about Mrs. , 

and that the stories are not true, and that the same is the case with other 
stories. 1 do not wish any reply to this. I thought it only due to justice 
that 1 should say so much. Truly yours, 

(Signed) II. W. Bkecher. 

Mr. Beecher told me that Mrs. Beccher and himself, with- 
out knowing of the confession of Mrs. Tilton to her husband, 
21* 



490 AN APPEAL FOR PEACE. 

had been expressing great sympathy toward Mrs. Tilton and 
taken an active interest with her against her husband. I said, 
"Mr. Beecher, I want that recantation ; I have come for it." 
" Well," said he, " what shall I do without it ?" I replied, " I 
don't know. I can tell you what will happen with it." He 
asked, " What will you do if I give it you ?" I answered, " I 
will keep it as I keep the confession. If you act honorably I 
will protect it with my life, as I will protect the other with my 
life. Mr. Tilton asked for that confession this morning, and 
I said, ' I will never give it to you ; you shall not have it from 
my hands until I have exhausted every effort for peace.' " Mr. 
Beecher gave me back the paper, the original of which I now 
produce in Mrs. Tilton's handwriting, marked "D," as fol- 
lows : — 

December 30th, 1870. 

Wearied with importunity and weakened by sickness, 1 gave a letter 
inculpating my friend Henry Ward Beecher, under assurances that that 
would remove all difficulties between me and my husband. That letter I 
now revoke. I was persuaded-to it, almost forced, when I was in a weak- 
ened state of mind. I regret it and recall all its statements. 

(Signed) E. R. Tilton. 

1 desire to say explicitly Mr. Beecher has never offered any improper 
solicitations, but has always treated me in a manner becoming a Christian 
and a gentleman. 

(Signed) Elizabeth R. Tilton. 

Afterward Mr. Tilton left with me another letter, dated the 
same night of the recantation, December 30th, bearing on the 
same topic, to be kept with the papers, which was in his wife's 
handwriting. It is here produced and marked " E," as fol- 
lows : — 

December 30th, 1870— Midnight. 
My Dear Husband — I desire to leave with you before going to sleep a 
statement that Mr. Henry Ward Beecher called upon me this evening, 
asked me if I would defend him against any accusation in a council of minis- 
ters, and I replied solemnly that I would in case the accuser was any other 
person than my husband. He (H. W. B.) dictated a letter which I 
copied as my own, to be used by him as against any other accuser except 
my husband. This letter was designed to vindicate Mr. Beecher against 
all other persons save only yourself. I was ready to give him this letter 
because he said with pain that my letter in your hands addressed to him, 
dated December 20th, " has struck him dead and ended his usefulness.'* 



ASKS THEODORE'S FORGIVENESS. 491 

You and I are pledged to do our best to avoid publicity. God grant a 
speedy end to" all further anxieties. Affectionately, 

(Signed) Elizabeth. 

When I went home with the recantation I found Tilton there 
and showed it to him. He expressed his surprise and gratifica- 
tion that I should have been able to get it, and I then showed 
to him how very foolish it would have been in the morning to 
have proceeded angrily against Beecher. I made another appeal 
for peace, saying that, notwithstanding great difficulties 
appeared in the way, if they were properly dealt with they 
could be beaten out of the way. He expressed his willingness 
and desire for peace. 

When I saw Beecher I made an agreement, at his request, to 
go and see him on Sunday, January 1st. I went to his house 
in accordance with the engagement. He took me into his 
stud}', and then told me again of his great surprise that Eliza- 
beth should have made the confession of his criminal com- 
merce with her to her husband without letting him (Beecher) 
know anything about it, making his destruction at any mo- 
ment possible, and without warning to him. He expressed his 
great grief at this wrong which he had done as a minister and 
friend to Theodore, and at his request I took pen and paper 
and he dictated to me the following paper, all of which is in 
my handwriting except the words, "I have trusted this to 
Moulton in confidence," and the signature, which latter are in 
Mr. Beecher's. It is here produced and marked " F." : — 

Brooklyn, Jan. 1st, 1871. 
[In trust with F. D. Moulton J. 

My Dear Friend Moulton : — I ask through you Theodore Tilton's 
forgiveness, and I humble myself before him as I do before my God. He 
would have been a better man in my circumstances than I have been. I 
can ask nothing except that he will remember all the other hearts that 
would ache. I will not plead for myself. I even wish 1 were dead; but 
others must live and suffer. 

I will die before any one but myself is implicated, All my thoughts are 
running toward my friends, toward the poor child lying there and praying 
with her folded hands, she is guiltless — sinned against; bearing the 
transgression of another. Her forgiveness I have. I humbly pray to 
God that he may put it into the heart of her husband to forgive me. 

I have trusted this to Moulton in confidence. 

(Signed) II. W. Beecher. 



492 -R4 TE8 OF BECONCILIA TI0J7. 

This was intrusted to me in confidence, to be shown only to 
Tilton, which I did. It had reference to no other fact or act 
than the confession of sexual intercourse between Beecher and 
Mrs. Tilton, which he at that interview confessed, and denied 
not, but confessed. He also at other interviews subsequently 
held between us in relation to the unfortunate affair unqualifi- 
edly confessed that he had been guilty of adultery with Mrs. 
Tilton, and always in a spirit of grief and sorrow at the enor- 
mity of the crime he had committed against Mr. Tilton's fam- 
ily. At such times he would speak with much feeling of the 
relation he had sustained toward them as pastor, spiritual ad- 
viser and trusted friend. His self-condemnation at the ruin 
he had wrought under such circumstances was full and com- 
plete, and at times he was so bowed down with grief in conse- 
quence of the wrong he had done that he threatened to put an 
end to his life. He also gave to me the letter, the first draft 
of which, marked U A," is above given, in reference to which 
he said that Bo wen had given it to him ; that he had told 
Bowen that Tilton must be crazy to write such a letter as 
that ; that he did not understand it, and that Bowen said to 
him, " I will be your friend in this matter." He then made a 
statement which Tilton had made to me at my house of the 
charge that Bowen had made to him (Tilton); said that Bow- 
en had been very treacherous toward Tilton as well as toward 
himself, because he (Beecher) had had a reconciliation with 
Bowen, of which he told me the terms, and that Bowen had 
never in his (Beecher's) presence spoken of, or referred to any 
allegation of crime or wrong-doing on his part with any wom- 
an whatever. He gave me, in general terms, the reconcilia- 
tion, and afterwards gave me two memoranda, which I here 
produce, which show the terms of the reconciliation. The 
first is in the handwriting of Bowen, containing five items, 
which Beecher assured me were the terms which Bowen claimed 
should be the basis of reconciliation. It is as follows, and is 
marked "G":— 

First — Report and publish sermons and lecture-room talks. 

Second — New edition Plymouth Collection and Freeland's 
interest. 

Third — Explanations to church. 

Fourth — Write me a letter. 

Fifth — Eetract in every quarter what has been said to my 
injury. 

The second paper is a pencil memorandum of the reconcili- 



MR. HOWARD PROTESTS. 493 

ation with Bowen in Beecher's handwriting, giving an account 
of the afFair. It is marked " II," as follows : — 

About February, 1870, at a long interview at Mr. Fre< land's 
house, for the purpose of having a full and final reconciliation 
between Bowen and Beecher, Mr. Bowen statrd his grievances, 
which were all either of a business nature or of my treatment 
of him personally (as per memorandum in writing). 

After hours of conference everything was adjusted. We 
shook hands. We pledged each other to work henceforth 
without jar or break. I said to him : — "Mr. Bowen, if you 
hear anything of me not in accordance with this agreement of 
harmony do not let it rest. Come straight to me at once, and 
I will do the same by you. 

He agreed. In the lecture room I stated that all our differ- 
ences were over, and that we were friends again. This public 
recognition he was present and heard, and expressed himself 
as greatly pleased with. It was after all this that I asked Mr. 
Howard to help me carry out this reconciliation, and to call on 
Mr. Bowen and to remove the 1 trie difference between them. 

Mr. Howard called, expressed his gratification. 

Then it was that without any provocation he (Mr. Bowen) 
told Mr. Howard that this reconciliation did not include one 
matter, that he (Bowen) "knew that about Mr. Beecher which 
if he should speak it would drive Mr. Beecher out of Brook- 
lyn." Mr. Howard protested with horror against such a state- 
ment, saying : — " Mr. Bowen this is terrible. No man should 
make such a statement unless he has absolute evidence." To 
this Mr. Bowen replied that he had this evidence, and said, 
pointedly, that he (Howard) might go to Mr. Beecher, and 
that Mr. Beecher would never give his consent that he (Bowen) 
should tell Mr. Howard this secret. 

Mr. Bowen at no time had ever made known to Mr. Beecher 
what this secret was, and the hints which Mr. Beecher had 
had of it led him to think it was another matter ', and not the 
slander which he now finds it to be. 

In that interview Beecher was very earnest in his expression 
of regret at what had been done against Tilton in relation to 
his business connection with Bowen, and besought me to do 
everything I could to save him from the destruction which 
would come upon him if the story of his (Beecher's) inter- 
course with Mrs. Tilton should be divulged. In compliance 
with the directions of Beecher, January 1st, 1871, I took the 
paper marked " F," which he had dictated to me, to Tilton, 



494: MO UL TON MEETS BO WEN. 

detailed to him Beeclier's expressions of regret and sorrow, 
spoke to him of his agony of mind, and again appealed to him 
to have the whole matter kept quiet, if for no other reason, 
for the sake of the children. To this Tilton assented. I found 
him writing the letter to Bowen of that date, which I have he- 
fore produced marked " B." He told me also of the contracts 
he had with Bowen with a penalty, when he left the Independ- 
ent, to be editor of the Brooklyn Union and special contribu- 
tor to the Independent, at a salary of $100 per week, with an- 
other salary of equal amount for his editorship of the Brook- 
lyn Union and a portion of the profits. Copies of these con- 
tracts I cannot produce, because both papers were delivered to 
Bowen alter the arbitration of the controversy of which I am 
about to speak. These contracts provided that they could be 
terminated by mutual consent or upon six months' notice, or 
upon the death of either party, or at once by the party who 
wished to break or annul them paying to the other the sum of 
$2,500. Tilton insisted that that sum, with his arrears of sal- 
ary, was justly due him, and that he should bring suit against 
Bowen unless he settled, and he gave me an authorization to 
settle his affairs with Bowen, which paper I gave to Mr. Bow- 
en when I went down to treat with him, retaining this copy, 
marked " I":— 

Brooklyn, Jan. 2d, 1871\ 
Mr. H- C. Bowen :— 

Sir- I hereby authorize Mr. Francis I). Moulton to act in my behalf in 
full settlement with you of all my accounts growing out of my contracts 
for services to the Independent and the Brooklyn Daily Union. 

(Signed) Theodore Tilton. 

Acting in the interest of Beecher. I told Tilton that this 
controversy with Bowen, if possible, should be peacefully set- 
tled lest it might reopen the other matters relating to Beecli- 
er's conduct in Tilton's family and the charges made by Bowen 
against Beecher. To this Tilton assented, giving me the au- 
thorization above quoted. 

At my earliest convenience I called upon Bowen at his office 
upon this business, telling him that I wanted him to settle with 
me, as I was authorized by Tilton by this letter (handing him 
the letter) to settle for the breaking of the contract with Til- 
ton as contributor to the Independent, and as editor of the 
Brooklyn Union. I also handed him an article written by Til- 
ton for' the Independent, which he (Tilton) claimed was in part 



MO ULTON MEETS BO WEN. 405 

performance of his contract, which article was subsequently 
returned to Tilton by Bowen through me. Bowen said that 
he did not consider that he owed Tilton any money at all for 
breaking the contracts — that he had terminated them, having, 
in his opinion, sufficient reasons fur so doing. " Well," I said, 
"Mr. Bowen, your contracts are specific." lie said he '* knew 
they were, but they provided for arbitration in case of any 
differences between the parties." I replied, in substance, that 
the arbitration only referred to differences between the parties 
as to the articles to be published as editor and contributor by 
Tilton and as to Bowen's conduct as publisher, and that there 
was a fixed sum as penalty for breach of the contracts. The 
interview terminated with his refusal to settle the claim I de- 
manded, which refusal I reported to Tilton, advising him still 
not to sue Bowen. 

The following correspondence is with reference to my meet- 
ing Mr. Bowen on this business. The letter marked "J 1" is 
my note to Mr. Bowen, and his reply, marked ''J 2": — 

Brooklyn, Jan. 9th, 1871. 
Mr. Hknry C. Bowen : — 

Dkar Sir — Referring to a recent interview with you, I would state that 
in consequence of illness I have heen detained at home, and I deem it of 
great importance to the interest of all concerned in the affairs ahout which 
we talked, that you and I should meet at an early moment. If you will call 
at my house, No. 143 Clinton Street, I shall be glad to see you at any 
hour convenient to youself to-morrow. 

Truly yours, 

F. D. Moulton. 

90 Willow Street, Brooklyn, Jan, 10th, 1871. 
Sir : — I am not very well hut will try to call at your house Thursday 
evening at eight o'clock. I am engaged to-morrow evening. I can go 
this evening if you will inform me that it will he convenient for you to see 
me. Unless I learn from you to the contrary I will see you on Thursday 
evening. Very respectfully, 

Henry C. Bowen. 
Mr. F. D. Moulton. 

in pursuance of this correspondence we met at my house 
and entered into negotiations ahout the settlement of the con- 
tract with Tilton. At that time, during the interview, I 
showed Bowen the letter of January 1st, of Tilton, (which he, 
Tilton, had placed in my hands to use in accordance with my 



496 BOWEN AND OLIVER JOHNSON 

own discretion), heretofore given, marked " B." Bowen, dur- 
ing the reading of the letter, seemed to be much excited, and 
at only one point of the letter questioned the accuracy of its 
statements, which states as follows: "that alluding byname 
to a woman, now a widow, whose husband's death no doubt 
was hastened by his knowledge that Mr. Beecher had main- 
tained with her an improper intimacy." To that he said, "I 
didn't make that allusion ; Mr. Tilton made it." I went on to 
the close of the letter and finished it, when Bowen said to me, 
" Has Tilton told Beecher the contents of this letter ? " I 
replied, " Yes, he has." Said he, " What shall I do ? What I 
said at that interview was said in confidence. We struck 
hands there, and pledged ourselves to God that no one there 
present would reveal anything there spoken." I said to him, 
" It would be an easy matter to confirm what you say or prove 
that what you say is false. Mr. Oliver Johnson was there, and 
I have submitted this letter to Mr. Johnson, in Mr. Tilton's 
presence, and he tells me that there was no obligatory confi- 
dence imposed on any of the parties concerning anything said 
at this interview, save a special pledge, mutually given, that 
nothing should be said concerning Mr. Beecher's demonstra- 
tions toward Mrs. Tilton. Mr. Johnson also says — and this 
confirms what you say in regard to one point — namely, that 
the allusion to the widow was made by Theodore Tilton, and 
that you said you had no doubt that her husband's death was 
caused by his knowledge of her improper intimacy with Mr. 
Beecher. Quoting your language, he says that you said, ' I 
have no doubt about it whatever.' Mr. Johnson also says that 
your statements in regard to Beecher were not intimations of 
his adulteries, but plain and straightforward charges of the 
same. He says that you said that you knew of four or five 
cases of Mr. Beecher's adulterous intercourse with women. 
Mr. Johnson says also that you at that interview plainly de- 
clared that Mr. Beecher had confessed his guilt to you." I 
also said to him: — " Mr. Tilton states that you said, 'I can't 
stand it any longer. You and I owe a duty to society in this 
matter. That man ought not to stay another week in his pul- 
pit. It isn't safe for our families to have him in this city.' " 
I also said to him : — " Mr. Johnson also states that at the in- 
terview of December 2Gth, at your house, Willow Street, you 
voluntarily pledged your word to Mr. Johnson that you 
would take no further measures in regard to Mr. Tilton, with- 
out consultation with him (Mr. Johnson), and that you had 



MEMORANDUMS. 497 

said substantially the same thing to him previously, during 
private conversations between you and him." I then said to 
Bowen that I thought he was a very treacherous man, and for 
this reason that I knew he had had a reconciliation with 
Beecher — or rather I was informed of it — which was perfected 
in the house of God, and that within forty-eight hours from 
that time he had avowed to Mr. Howard that he conld if he 
chose drive Mr. Beecher out of town. I told him, further, 
that I was also informed that, prior to that reconciliation, he 
had made no charge against Beecher's character to Beecher, 
but only behind his back, and I said, " Mr. Bowen, I have the 
points of settlement between you. and Beecher in your own 
handwriting, and there is no reference to any charge of crime 
of any kind against Beecher." Mr. Bowen made no denial of 
these assertions of mine, but seemed, on the contrary, abashed 
and dejected, and in reply to my question, " What do you say 
to these charges which you have made against Beecher?" he 
declined to say anything about them, but repeated the ques- 
tion, " What can I do ? " I answered, " I am not your adviser ; 
I cannot dictate to you what course you should pursue, but 
you have done great injustice to Mr. Tilton and to Mr. Beecher 
and you ought to take the earliest means of repairing the inju- 
ry. I should think it would be but just for you to restore 
Tilton to the Independent, but I don't believe he would go 
back if you should offer it to him." His reply was, " How can 
I do that now ?" I told him I didn't know ; he must find a 
way to settle his own difficulties. He again expressed his 
willingness to arbitrate the question of money between him- 
self and Tilton growing out of the contract. I told him that 
I would not arbitrate; that a plaiu provision of the contract 
provided that he should pay what I demanded, and he must 
fulfill it. Mr. Bowen rose to leave, and said before leaving, 
whenever I wanted to see him he would be happy to come to 
my house and confer on this subject; and he did, on several 
subsequent occasions, visit me at my house whenever I sent 
for him to consult on this matter. The means I have of giving 
so accurately the conversation between myself and Bowen as 
to the conversations had with Tilton and Oliver Johnson are 
that prior to my meeting with Bowen, as I told him, I had an 
interview with Oliver Johnson in the presence of Tilton, 
where the whole matter was discussed, and a memorandum of 
Oliver Johnson's statement, in which he gave his recollection 
of the interview of December 26th, when Tilton and Johnson 



49 8 THE ARBITHA TOR. 

were present, was taken by Tilton in short-hand in my pres- 
ence, and copied out at the time in Johnson's presence, which 
memorandum has been in my possession ever since, and from 
which I read each statement, one after the other, to Mr, Bow- 
en. I here produce it, marked " K " : — 

At the interview of December 26th, (Willow Street, No. 
90), Mr. Bowen voluntarily pledged his word to Mr. Johnson 
that he (H. C. B.) would take no further measures in regard 
to Mr Tilton, without consultation with Mr. Johnson. Mr. 
Bowen likewise had said substantially the same thing to Mr. 
Johnson previously during private conversations between these 
two persons. 

There was no obligatory confidence imposed on any of the 
parties concerning anything said at this interview save a 
special pledge, mutually given, that nothing should be said 
concerning Mr. Beecher's demonstration toward Mrs. Til- 
ton. 

Mr. 0. J. says that Mr. Bowen's statements in regard to H. 
W. B. were not intimations of H. W. B/s adulteries, but plain 
and straightforward charges of the same. H. 0. B., stated that 
he knew four or five cases of Mr. B.'s adulterous intercourse 
with women. 

0. J. says that H. C. B. at this interview plainly declared 
that H. W" B. had confessed his guilt to H. C. B. 

H. C B. — I cannot stand it any longer. You and I owe a 
duty to society in this matter. That man ought not to stay 
another week in his pulpit. It is not safe for our families to 
have him in this city. 

The allusion to the widow was made by T. T., and H. 0. B. 
said he had no doubt that her husband's death was caused by 
his knowledge of her improper intimacy with H. W. B. " I 
have no doubt about it whatever." 

To make an end of the statement as to the controversy be- 
tween Tilton and Bowen, I further state that various negotia- 
tions were had between Bowen and myself, which resulted 
finally in an arbitration in which H. B. Claflin, Charles Storrs 
and James Freeland were referees; that there was very consid- 
erable delay arising from my own absence South in the early 
spring on account of sickness, Mr. Bowen's absence during 
the summer, and Tilton's absence during the fall and winter 
on his lecturing tour; so that the arbitration did not terminate 
until the 2d of April, 1872. This arbitration was determined 



" TRIPARTITE CO VENANT" 499 

upon by. me, and my determination given to Mr. Claflin in the 
following note which I sent, marked "K2" : — 

Brooklyn, April 1st, 1872. 
My Dear Mr. Claflin : — After full consideration of all interests other 
than Theodore's, I have advised him to arbitrate on grounds which he will 
explain to you, and which I hope will accord with your judgment and kind 
wishes toward all concerned. Cordially yours, 

Francis D. Moulton. 

Tilton and Bowen and myself appeared before the arbitra- 
tors, and all made statements. In Tilton's statement was in- 
cluded the letter marked " B," before given, which he had put 
into type, which fact influenced me to consent to the arbitra- 
tion in order to do away with the necessity for its publication. 
After full hearing — nothing having been submitted to the 
arbitrators except the business differences of Tilton and Bowen 
the arbitrators made an award that Mr. Bowen should pay 
Tilton the sum of $7,000 for which he (Mr. Bowen) drew his 
check upon the spot and the contracts were given up to 
him. 

After the above settlement a paper, which has since been 
called the u tripartite agreement," was signed by Bowen and 
Tilton, Beecher signing it subsequently. The inducing cause 
to this arbitration was the fact that Tilton had commenced a 
suit against Bowen and prepared an article for the Golden Age, 
in which he embodied his letter (marked " B") to Mr. Bowen 
and a statement of the circumstances. He submitted that 
article to me, and I begged him to withhold it from publica- 
tion. I also brought Beecher and Tilton together, and Beecher 
added his entreaties to mine. To prevent its publication and 
close the suit, which might work injury to Beecher and others, 
I agreed to submit Mr. Tilton's claim to arbitration, to which 
1 had been invited before by Mr. Bowen, but which I had 
refused, as before stated. In this interview between Beecher, 
Tilton and myself I said, " Perhaps we can settle the whole 
matter if I can see Mr. Claflin, for Claflin knows Bowen well, 
and understands the importance of all these interests." Beech- 
er said he would send Claflin to me, and I might confer with 
him upon the matter. In consequence of this Mr. Claflin 
called on me and we conferred upon the matter, and subse- 
quently the arbitration was agreed upon. At the conclusion 
of the arbitration the parties signed the " tripartite covenant," 
which was drawn up (as I understand) by Mr. Samuel Wilke- 



500 RECANTATION. 

son. It was first signed by Bowen. In the form in which it 
was first drawn it bound the parties to say nothing of any 
wrong done or offence committed by Beecher, and fully exon- 
erated him therefrom. Alter Bowen had signed it, it was 
handed to Tilton to sign, and he refused. He was willing to 
sign an agreement never to repeat again the charges of Bowen, 
saying that if for no other reason, if the matter should there- 
' after ever come to light, it would appear that there had been 
something between Beecher and Mrs. Tilton, and it might be 
used as evidence to the injury of himself and family, as well as 
of Beecher, and, therefore, it was not for the interest of either 
Tilton or Beecher to sign it in the form first proposed. No 
copy of that " tripartite covenant " was confided to me. Ap- 
pended to this covenant and made, a part of it was a copy of 
the proof sheet article for the Golden Age, so that it might be 
known exactly to what scandal it referred. How that " tripar- 
tite covenant" came to be published I know not. As a part 
of that settlement it was arranged that Tilton should write a 
letter to Bowen, to be published in the Independent, with cer- 
tain comments to be made by Bowen. The original draft of 
these, in full recantation and withdrawal of all charges and 
matters of difference between Tilton and Bowen, is herewith 
produced and marked " L " : — 

Theodore Tilton : 

We have received the following note from an old friend : — 

Office of the "Golden Age," 
(Original date blotted). 
New York, April 3d, 1872. 
Henry C. Bowen, Esq : — 

My Dear Sir — In view of misapprehensions which I lately found 
existing among our mutual friends at the West, touching the severance of 
our relations in the Independent and the Brooklyn Union, I think it would 
be well, both for your sake and mine, if we should publicly say that, while 
our political and theological differences still exist, and will probably widen, 
yet that all other disagreements (so far as we ever had any) have been 
blotted out in reciprocal friendliness and good will. 

Truly yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 

It is so long since Mr. Tilton's pen has contributed to the Independent 

that we give to his brief note his old and familiar place at the head of these 

columns. While we never agreed with some of his radical opinions (and 

quite likely, as he intimates, we never shall, yet we owe to his request as 



BOWEN WHITEWASHES TILTON. 501 

above printed the hearty response which his honest purposes, his minly 
character, and his unstained integrity elicit from all who know him well. 
The abuse and slanders heaped upon him by some unfriendly journals have 
never been countenanced by the Independent, Regretting his opposition 
to the present Administration, we nevertheless wish abundant prosperity 
to the Golden Age and its editor. II. C. B. 

The above proposed card was subsequently arid voluntarily 
changed by Mr. Bowen into a still stronger and more friendly 
notice of Mr. Tilton. 

After the tripartite covenant was signed it came to the 
knowledge of Beechcr, as he informed me, that Bowen was 
still spreading scandals about him, at which he was angered 
and proposed to write Bowen a letter stating the points that 
had been settled in their reconciliation and agreement and the 
reason why Mr. Bowen's mouth should be closed in regard to 
such slanders. I find among my papers a pencil and ink 
memorandum of the statements intended to be embodied in 
that letter, which was submitted to my judgment by Beecher. 
It is in his handwriting and is produced, marked "M." It 
reads as follows: — 

I. That he allowed himself to listen to unfounded rumors. 

II. That he never brought them either (1) to me (2) nor 
in any proper manner to the church; (3) that he only whis- 
pered them, and even that only when he had some business end 
in view. 

III. That he did not himself believe that anything had oc- 
curred which untitted me for the utmost trust shown. 

(1) By continuing for twelve to fifteen years a conspicuous 
attendant at Plymouth church. 

(2) By contracts with me as editor of the Independent. 

(3) By continued publications of my sermons, &c, making 
the privilege of doing so — even as late as the interview at 
Freeland's — one of these points of settlement. 

(4) By a settlement of all difficulties at Freeland's (and a 
reconciliation which was to lead to work together), in which 
not a single hint of any jiersonal immorality, but every item 
was business. 

IV. As a result of such agreement — 

(1) 1 was to resume my old familiarity at his house. 

(2) To write him a letter that he could give hi-s family to 
show that 1 had restored confidence. 

(3) To endeavor to remove from him the coldness and 
frowns of the parish, as one who had injured me. 



502 BEECHER 8 MEMORAND UM. 

(4) A card to be published, and which was published, giv- 
ing him the right to put in the Independent sermons and lec- 
ture room talks, &c. 

(5) I was invited to go to Woodstock and be his guest, as I 
was at Grant's reception. 

V. Of the settlement by a committee whose record is with 
Mr. Claflin I have nothing to say. I did not see Mr. Beecher 
during the whole process, nor do I remember to have spoken 
with him since. 

VI. Now the force of the statement that lie did not himself 
believe that I had done anything immoral which should affect 
my standing as a man, a citizen and a minister, illustrated by 
the foregoing facts, is demonstrated by his conduct when he 
did believe that Theodore Tilton committed immoralities, his 
dispossession of Independent his ignominious expulsion from 
B. U., his refusal to pay him the salary and forfeit of con- 
tract. 

As a part of this transaction Beecher sent me the following 
note, marked " N " :— 

Monday. 

My Dear Friend — I called last evening, as agreed, but you had stepped 
out. On the way to church last evening I met Claflin. He says B. denies 
any such treacherous whisperings, and is in a right state. 

I mentioned my proposed letter. He liked the idea.^ I read him the 
draft of it (in lecture room). He drew back, and said better not send it. 
I asked him if B. had ever made him statement of the very bottom facts ; 
if there were any charges I uid not know. He evaded and intimated that 
if he had he hardly would be right in telling me. I think he would be 
right in telling you — ought to. I have not sent any note and have de- 
stroyed that prepared. 

The real point to avoid is, to an appeal to church and then a council. 

It would be a conflagration, and give every possible chance for parties, 
for hidings and evasions, and increase an hundred-fold this scandal, with- 
out healing anything. 

I shall see you as soon as I return. 

Meantime I confide everything to your wisdom, as I always have, and 
with such success hitherto that I have full trust for future. 
i_ Don't fail to see C. and have a full and confidential talk. 

Yours, ever 

From the time of the tripartite covenant nothing occurred 
to disturb the relations between Beecher, Tilton and Bo wen, 



TROUBLE IN THE CAMP. 503 

or either of them, so far as I know, until the publication in 
Woodhull & ClufliiCs Weekly of an elaborate story concerning 
the social relations between Beecher, Tilton and Mrs. Til ton. 
After that publication appeared it again came to the knowledge 
of Beecher that Bovven was making declarations derogatory to 
his character. This was followed by the publication of the 
" tripartite covenant," which Beecher informed me was done 
by Mr. Samuel Wilkeson, and also that Beecher was not a 
party to its publication nor knew anything about it. There 
afterward appeared an account of an interview between Bow- 
en, H. B. Claflin and Mrs Woodhull, published in the Brook- 
lyn Eagle, in which an attempt was made to obtain from 
her any letters which she might have showing that Beecher 
was guilty of criminal conduct, which attempt failed. Where- 
upon Beecher addressed me the following note, which I here 
produce, marked "N 2 ": 

I need to see you this evening any time till half past ten. Can you 
make appointment? Will you call at 124, or shall I? At what hour? I 
send Claflin's letter. Keep it. Answer by telegraph. H. W. B. 

I shall take tea at Howard's, 74 Hicks, and should you call, let it be 
there. Or I will go round to your rooms. I want to show you a proposed 
card. 

I also produce a letter of Claflin to Beecher of June 28th, 
1873, which was enclosed with the above, marked "N3" : — 

New York, June 28th, 1872. 

My Dear Mr. Beecher — I have yours. It was distinctly understood 
that the call on Woodhull was entirely private and not to be reported. I 
told Bowen, Woodhull had no letters from you of the least consequence to 
him or anybody else, and I was entirely satisfied after the interview that I 
was entirely right. I went there at Bowen's earnest solicitation, knowing 
it could not harm you and might satisfy him, as I think it did. It was in 
bad faith to publish the meeting. All present must have been disgusted at 
the utter lack of what Woodhull professed to have, but could not produce. 
Truly your friend, H. B. Ci.afi.in. 

P. S. — Wish you would call and see me if you pass the store. I am 
always in at about eleven A. M. H. B. C. 

Beecher, when we met in pursuance of his note, produced 
to me a memorandum of a card which he proposed to publish 
in the Eagle, and which he submitted to my judgment and 
gave me leave to alter the same as I thought fit. That paper 
is herewith produced, marked "N 4 " : — 



504 LETTER TO TEE EAGLE. 

Brooklyn, June, 1873. 

I have seen in the morning papers that application has been made to 
Mrs. Victoria Woodhull for certain letters of mine supposed to contain 
information respecting certain infamous stories against me. She has two 
business letters, one declining an invitation to a suffrage meeting and the 
other declining to give her assistance solicited. 

These, and all letters of mine in the hands of any other persons, they 
have my cordial consent to publish. I will only add in this connection 
that the stories and rumors which have for a time been circulated about 
me are grossly untrue, and I stamp them in general and in particular as 
utterly false. 

I saw the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle at his office, and af- 
ter consultation with him the card was published as follows :-=— 

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle : — 

Sir — In a long and active life in Brooklyn it has rarely happened that 
the Eagle and myself have been in accord on questions of common con- 
cern to our fellow citizens. I am for this reason compelled to acknowl- 
edge the unsolicited confidence and regard of which the columns of the 
Eagle of late bear testimony. I have just returned to the city to learn 
that application has been made to [Mrs.] Victoria Woodhull for letters of 
mine supposed to contain information respecting certain infamous stories 
against me. [I have no objection to have the Eagle state, in any way it 
deems fit, that Mrs. Woodhull] or any other person or persons who may 
have letters of mine in their possession have my cordial consent to pub- 
lish them. In this connection [and at this time] I will only add that the 
stories and rumors which have, for some time past, been circulated about 
me are untrue, and I stamp them in general and in particular as utterly 
untrue. Respectfully, 

(Signed) Henry Ward Beecher. 

In order that the emendations made by myself and Mr. Kin- 
sella may be observed at a glance, I have enclosed in brackets 
the words which are not in the original. It will be thus seen 
how much of this card was the composition of Mr. Beecher, 
and how much he relied upon the judgment of others in its 
preparation. 

I would have submitted this card to Beecher before publica- 
tion, but he was absent. For obvious reasons I held myself 
excepted from this call for publication, as was well understood 
by Beecher. I know nothing further of the relations of Bow- 
en and Beecher in this connection which is of importance to 
this inquiry. I have traced them thus far because that contro- 



A CURIOUS COMPLICATION. 505 

versy at each stage of it continually threatened the peaceful 
settlement of the trouble of Tilton and Beecher, an account 
of which I now resume. 

Another curious complication of the relations of the parties 
arose from the publication by Mrs. Woodhull of the story in 
her journal. It is a matter of public notoriety that Mrs Isa- 
bella Beecher Hooker, the sister of Beecher, had espoused the 
cause of Mrs. Woodhull on the question of woman suffrage, 
and had been accused still further of adopting her social 
tenets. 

Beecher's relation to Mrs. Tilton had been communicated to 
her. This had been made a subject of communication from 
Mrs. Hooker to her brother, and, after the publication by Mrs. 
Woodhull, Mrs. Hooker addressed the following note to her 
brother, which contains so full and clear an exposition of all 
the facts and circumstances that I need not add a word of ex- 
planation. I produce Mrs. Hooker's letter to Beecher under 
date of November 1st, 1872, marked " N 5 " : — 

Hartford, Nov. 1st, 1872. 

Dear Brother — In reply to your words, " If you still believe in that 
woman," &c., let me say that from her personally I have never heard a 
word on this subject; and when, nearly a year ago, I heard that when here 
in this city she said she had expected you to introduce her at Steinway, I 
wrote her a most indignant and rebuking letter, to which she replied in a 
manner that astounded me by its calm assertion that she considered you as 
true a friend to her as myself. 

I enclosed this letter to Mr. Tilton, asking him to show it to you if he 
thought best, and to write me what it all meant. He never replied nor 
returned the letter to me as I requested, but I have a copy of it at your 
service. In the month of February, after that, on returning from Wash- 
ington, I went to Mrs. Stanton's to spend Sunday. At Jersey City I met 
Mrs. W., who had come on in the same train with me, it seemed, and who 
urged me in a hasty way to bring Mrs. Stanton over on Monday for a 
suffrage consultation as to spring convention. Remembering her assertion 
of the friendship between you, and of her meeting you occasionally at 
Mr. Moulton's house (I think this is the name), I thought I would put this 
to test, and replied that if I could be sure of seeing you at the same time 
I would come. She promised to secure you if possible, and I fully meant 
to keep my appointment, but on Sunday I remembered an appointment at 
New Haven, which I should miss if I stopped in New York, and so I 
passed by, dropping her a letter by the way. Curiously enough sister 
Catherine, who was staying at your house at this time, said to me here, 

22 



506 MfiS. HOOKERS LETTER. 

casually, the latter part of that same week, " Belle, Henry went over to New 
York to see you last Monday, but couldn't find you." Of course my in- 
ference was that Mrs. W. either had power over you, or you were secretly 
friends. During that Sunday Mrs. Stanton told me precisely what Mr. 
Tilton had said to- her, when in the rage of discovery he fled to the house 
of Mrs. , and before them both narrated the story of his own infideli- 
ties as confessed to his wife and of hers as confessed to him. She added 
that not long after she went to Mr. Moulton's and met you coming down 
the front steps, and on entering met Tilton and Moulton, who said: — "We 
have just had Plymouth Church at our feet and here is his confession," 
showing a manuscript. She added that Mrs. Tilton had made similar 
statements to Miss Anthony, and I have since received from Miss A, a 
corroboration of this, although she refused to give me particulars, being 
bound in confidence, she thinks. From that day to this I have carried a 
heavy load, you may be sure. I could not share it with my husband, be- 
cause he was already over-burdened and alarmingly affected brain-wise, 
but I resolved that if he went abroad, as he probably must, I would not go 
with him, leaving you alone as it were, to bear whatever might come of 
revelation. I withstood the entreaties of my husband to the last, and sent 
Mary in my stead, and at the last moment I confided to her all that I knew 
and felt and feared, that she might be prepared to sustain her father 
should trial overtake them. By reading the accompanying letters from 
them you will perceive that from outside evidence alone lie had come to 
the conclusions which 1 reached only through the most reliable testimony 
that could well be furnished in any case and against every predisposition 
of my own soul. Fearing that they would hasten home to me and thus 
lose all the benefit of the journey (for, owing to this and other anxieties of 
business, John had grown worse rather than better up to that very time, 
though the air of the high Alps was beginning to promote sleep and resto- 
ration), I telegraphed by cable, " No trouble here — go to Italy," and by 
recent letters I am rejoiced to hear of them in Milan in comfortable health 
and spirits. From the day those letters came the matter has not been out 
of my thoughts an hour, it seems to me, and an unceasing prayer has as- 
cended that I might he guided with wisdom and truth. But what is the 
truth I am farther from understanding this morning than ever. The tale 
as published is essentially the same as told to me — in fact, it is impossible 
but that Mr. Tilton is the authority for it, since I recognize a verisimili- 
tude, and, as I understand it, Mrs. T. was the sole revelator. The only 
reply I made to Mrs. Stanton was that if true, you had a philosophy of the 
relation of the sexes so far ahead of the times that you dared not announce 
it, though you consented to live by it; that this was in my judgment 
wrong, and God would bring all secret things to light in his own time and 



DR. CHANNINO AGREES IN THEORY. 507 

fashion, and I could only wait. I added that I had come to see that hu- 
man laws were an impertinence, but could get no further, though I could 
see glimpses of a possible new science of life, that at present was revolting 
to my feelings and my judgment ; that I should keep myself open to con- 
viction, however, and should converse with men, and especially women, 
on the whole subject, and as fast as I knew the truth I should stand by it, 
with no attempt at concealment. I think that Dr. Channing probably 
agrees with you in theory, but he had the courage to announce his con- 
victions before acting upon them. He refused intercourse with an un- 
congenial wife for a long time, and then left her and married a woman 
whom he still loves, leaving a darling daughter with her mother, and to- 
day he pays photographers to keep him supplied with her pictures as often 
as they can be procured. I send you the article he wrote when, abandoned 
by all their friends, he and his wife went to the West and stayed for years. 
Crushed by calumny and abuse, to-day they are esteemed more highly 
than ever, and he is in positions of public trust in Providence. 

You will perceive my situation, and, by all that I have suffered and am 
willing to suffer for your sake, I beg you to confide to me the whole truth. 
Then I can help you as no one else in the world can. The moment that I 
can know this matter as God knows it He will help you and me to bring 
everlasting good out of this seeming evil. If I could say truthfully that I 
believe this story to be a fabrication of Mr. and Mrs. Tilton's imposed 
upon a credulous woman— mere medium, whose susceptibility to impres- 
sions from spirits in the flesh and out of it is to be taken into account 
always — the whole thing dies. But if it is essentially true there is but 
one honorable way to meet it, in my judgment, and the precise method 
occurred to me in bed this morning, and I was about writing you to sug- 
gest it when your letter came. 

I will write you a sisterly letter, expressing my deep conviction that this 
whole subject needs the most earnest and chaste discussion ; that my own 
mind has long been occupied with it, but is still in doubt on many points, 
that I have observed for years that your reading and thinking has been 
profound on this and kindred subjects, and now the time has come for you 
to give the world, through your own paper, the conclusions you have 
reached and the reasons therefor. If you choose, I will then reply to 
each letter, giving the woman's view — for there is surely a man's and a 
woman's side to this beyond everywhere else — and by this means attention 
will be diverted from personalities and concentrated on social philosophy 
— the one subject that now ought to occupy all thinking minds. 

It seems to me that God has been preparing me for this work, and you 
also, for years and years. I send you a reply I wrote to Dr. Todd long 
ago, and which I could never get published without my name (which for 



508 MRS. HOOKERS REPLY TO BR. TODD. 

the sake of my daughters I wished to withhold) although God'; in, of the 
Nation', Holbrook, of the Herald of Health] Ward, of the Independent, 
and every mother to whom I have read it all told me it was the best thing 
ever written on the subject, and the men said they would publish if they 

dared, while Mrs. urged me to give my name and publish, and said 

she would rather have written it than anything else of its length in the 
" world, and if it were hers she would print it without hesitation. I send 
also a copy of a letter I wrote John Stuart Mill on his sending me an early 
copy of his "Subjection of Women," and his reply. I am sure that nearly 
all the thinking men and women are somewhere near you and will rally to 
your support if you are bold, frank, and absolutely truthful in stating your 
convictions. Mrs. Burleigh told Dr. Channing she was ready to avow her 
belief in social freedom when the time came ; she was weary now and glad 
of a reprieve, but should stand true to her convictions when she must. 
My own conviction is that the one radical mistake you have made is in 
supposing that you are so much ahead of your time, and in daring to at- 
tempt to lead when you have anything to conceal. Do not, I pray you, 
deceive yourself with the hope that the love of your church, or any other 
love, human or divine, can compensate the loss of absolute truthfulness to 
your own mental convictions. I have not told you the half I have suffered 
since February ; but you can imagine, knowing what my husband is to me, 
that it was no common love I have for you and for the truth, and for all 
mankind, women as well as men, when I decided to nearly break his heart, 
already lacerated by the course I had been compelled to pursue, by send- 
ing him away to die, perhaps, without me at his side. 

I wish you would come here in the evening some time (to the Burton 
cottage) or I will meet you anywhere in New York you appoint, and at 
any time. Ever yours, Belle. 

Read the letters from John and Mary in the order I have placed them. I 
will send these now and the other documents I have mentioned another 
day, waiting till I know whether you will meet me. 

On the 3d of the same month Mrs. Hooker addressed a 
letter to her brother, the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, which I 
produce, marked " N 6 " : — 

[Please return this letter to me when you have done with it.] 

Hartford, Sunday, Nov. 3d, 1872. 

Dear Brother Tom : — The blow has fallen, and I hope you are better 
prepared for it than you might have been but for our interview. I wrote 
H. a single line last week, thus, " Can I help you ?" And here is his re- 
ply — " If you still believe in that woman you cannot help me. If you 
think of her as I do you can, perhaps, though I do not need much help. I 



MBS. HOOKER TO THOMAS K. B. 509 

tread the falsehoods into the dirt from which they spring, and go on my 
way rejoicing. My people are thus far heroic and would give their lives 
for me. Their love and confidence would make me willing to bear far 
more than I have. Meantime the Lord has a pavilion in which He hides 
me until the storm be overpast. I abide in peace, committing myself to 
Him who gave Himself for me. I trust you give neither countenance nor 
credence to the abominable coinage that has been put afloat. The specks 
of truth are mere spangles up m a garment of falsehood. The truth itself 
is made to lie. Thank you for love and truth and silence, but think of the 
barbarity of dragging a poor dear child of a woman into this slough. 
Yours truly." 

Now, Tom, so far as I can see, it is he who has dragged the dear child 
into the slough and left her there, and who is now sending another woman 
to prison who is innocent of all crime but a fanaticism for the truth as re- 
vealed to her, and I, by my silence, am consenting unto her death. 

Bead the little note she sent me long ago, when, in a burst of enthusiasm 
over a public letter of hers which seemed wonderful to me, I told her how 
it affected me, and mark its prophetic words : — 

New York, August 8th, 1871. 
My Dear, Dear Friend : — I was never more happy in all my life than 
I am this morning, and made so by you whom I have learned to love so 
much. From you, from whom 1 had expected censure, I receive the first 
deep, pure words of approval and love. 1 know my course has often been 
contrary to your wishes, and it has been my greatest grief to know that it 
was so, since you have so nobly been my defender. But all the time I 
knew it was not I for whom you spoke, but all womanhood, and I was the 
more proud of you that your love was general and not personal. I am 
often compelled to do things from which my sensitive soul shrinks, and for 
which 1 endure the censure of most of my friends. But I obey a Power 
which knows better than they or I can know, and which has never left me 
stranded and without hope. I should be a faithless servant, indeed, were 
I to filter now when required to do what I cannot fully understand, yet in 
the issue of which I have full faith. None of the scenes in which I have 
enacted a part were what I would have selfishly chosen for my own happi- 
ness. I love my home, my children, my husband, and could live a sancti- 
fied life with them and never desire contact with the wide world. But such 
is not to be my mission. I know what is to come, though I cannot yet 
divulge it. My daily prayer is that heaven may vouchsafe me strength to 
meet everything which I know must be encountered and overcome. My 
heart is, however, too full to write you all I wish. I see the near approach 
of the grandest revelation the world has yet known, and for the part you 



510 "SPANGLES ON A GARMENT OF FALSEHOOD:' 

shall play in it, thousands will rise up and call you blessed. It was not for 
nothing that you and I met so singularly. Let us watch and pray, that we 
faint not by the wayside before we reach the consummation. We shall 
then look back with exceeding great joy to all we have been called upon to 
6uffer for the sake of a cause more holy than has yet come upon the earth. 
Again I bless you for your letter, Affectionately and faithfully yours, 

Victoria C. Woodhull. 

Oh, my dear brother, I fear the awful struggle to live according to law 
has wrought an absolute demoralization as to truthfulness, and so he can 
talk about " spangles on a garment of falsehood," when the garment is 
truth and the specks are the falsehood. 

His first letter to me was so different from this. I read it to you, but 
will copy it lest you have forgotten its character : — 

April 25th, 1872. 

" My Dear Belle : — I was sorry when I met you at Bridgeport not to 
have had longer talk with you about the meeting in May. I do not intend 
to make any speeches on any topic during anniversary week. Indeed, I 
shall be out of town. I do not want you to take any ground this year 
except upon suffrage. You know my sympathy with you. Probably you 
and I are nearer together than any of our family. I cannot give reason 
now. I am clear ; still, you will follow your own judgment. I thank you 
for your letter. Of some things I neither talk, nor will I be talked with. 
For love and sympathy I am deeply thankful. The only help that can be 
grateful to me or useful is silence and a silencing influence on all others. 
A day may come for converse. It is not now. Living or dead, my dear 
sister Belle, love me, and do not talk about me or suffer others to in your 
presence. God love and keep you. God keep us all. Your loving 
brother, H. W. B." 

The underscoring is his own, and when I read in that horrible story that 
he begged a few hours' notice that he ' might kill himself, my mind flew 
back to this sentence, which suggested suicide to me the moment I read 
it : "Living or dead, my dear sister Belle, love me" and I believed even 
that. 

Now, Tom, can't you go to brother Edward at once and give him these 
letters of mine, and tell him what I told you ; and when you have counseled 
together as brothers should, counsel me also, and come to me if you can. 
It looks as if he hoped to buy my silence with my love. At present, of 
course, I shall keep silence, but truth is dearer than all things else, and if 
he will not speak it in some way I cannot always stand as consenting to a 
lie. " God help us all." Yours in love, 

Belle. 



HENR Y'S PHILOSOPHY. 5 1 1 

If you can't come to me, send Edward. I am utterly alone, and my 
heart aches for that woman even as for my own flesh and blood. I do not 
understand her, but I know her to be pure and unselfish and absolutely 
driven by some power foreign to herself to these strange utterances, which 
are always in behalf of freedom, purity — truth, as she understands it — 
always to befriend the poor and outcast, and bring low only the proud, the 
hypocrites in high places. The word about meeting at Mrs. Phelps' house 
I have added to the copy. If you see Henry tell him of this. 

The reply to this letter by the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher to 
his sister is as follows, and needs but a single remark — the 
thought of a good man as to the value of testimony in this 
case. I refer to the last sentence of the postscript. This is 
produced, marked " N 7 :" — 

Elmira, Nov. 5, 1872. 

Dear Belle : — To allow the devil himself to be crushed for speaking 
the truth is unspeakably cowardly and contemptible. I respect, as at 
present advised, Mrs. Woodhull, while I abhor her philosophy. She only 
carries out Henry's philosophy, against which I recorded my protest some 
years ago, and parted (lovingly and achingly) from him, saying, " We 
cannot work together." He has drifted, and I have hardened like a crystal 
till I am sharp cornered and exacting. I cannot help him, except by 
prayer. I cannot help him through Edward. In my judgment Henry is 
following his slippery doctrines of expediency, and, in his cry of progress 
and the nobleness of human nature, has sacrificed clear, exact ideal 
integrity. Hands off until he is down, and then my pulpit, my home, my 
church and my purse and heart are at his service. Of the two, Woodhull 
is my hero and Henry my coward, as at present advised. But I protest 
against the whole batch and all its belongings. I was not anti-slavery ; 
I am not anti-family. But, as I wrote years ago, whenever I assault 
slavery because of its abominations I shall assail the Church, the State, the 
family and all other institutions of selfish usage. 

I return the papers. You cannot help Henry. You must be true to 
Woodhull. I am out of the circle as yet, and am glad of it. When the 
storm-line includes me I shall suffer as a Christian, saying, "Cease ye 
from man." 

Don't write to me. Eollow the truth, and when you need me cry out. 

Yours lovingly, 

(Signed) Tom. 

P. S. — I am so overworked and hurried that I see upon review that my 
letter sounds hard — because of its sententiousness. But believe me, dear 
Belle, that I see and suffer with you. You are in a tight place. But 



512 MR. HOOKER REVIEWS. 

having chosen your principles I can only counsel you to he true and take 
the consequences. Tor years, you know, I have been apart from all of 
you except in love. I think you all in the wrong as to anthropology and 
social science. But I honor and love them who suffer for conviction's 
sake. My turn to suffer will come in due time. In this world all Chris- 
tians shall suffer tribulation. So eat, sleep, pray, take good aim and 
shoot, and when the ache comes say even hereunto were we called. But 
I repeat — you can't help Henry at present. 

P. S. — I unseal my letter to enclose print and add : — You have no proof 
as yet of any offense on Henry's part. Your testimony would be allowed 
in no court. Tilton, wife, Moulton & Co. are witnesses. Even Mrs. 
Stanton can only declare hearsay. So if you move remember that you 
are standing on uncertain information, and we shall not probably ever get 
the facts, and I'm glad of it. If Mr. and Mrs. Tilton are brought into 
court, nothing will be revealed. Perjury, for good reason, is, with ad- 
vanced thinkers, no sin. 

It will be observed in the letter of Mrs. Hooker that she 
speaks of having refused to go to Europe with her husband, 
and that she remained at home in order to protect her brother 
in this emergency of his life. 

A letter came into my hands with the others from Mr. 
Hooker to his wife, under date of Florence, Italy, November 
3d, 1871, which tends to show that all this matter had been 
discussed between Mr. Hooker and his wife long before the 
publication by Mrs. Woodhull. I extract so much from the 
letter as refers to this subject. The remainder is a kindly 
communication of an absent husband to a loved wife, about 
wholly independent matters which have nothing to do with 
this controversy. It is produced, marked "N8" : — 

Florence, Sunday, Nov. 3d, 1872. 
My Precious Wife : — I hope you were not pained by what 1 wrote on 
Friday about the H. W. B. matter. I am getting much more at peace 
about the matter, but I cannot look upon it in any other light, and it is a 
relief to me to speak my mind right out about it and then let it rest. I 
could not have been easy till I had sworn a little. The only mitigation of 
the concealment of the thing that I can think of is tills — and it seems to 
me that some excuse, or at least explanation, may be found here — viz. that 
a consideration of the happiness of both Mr. T\ and his wife required it, 
or seemed to, .and the very possible further fact that he preferred to dis- 
close it, but took the advice of a few of his leading friends in the church 
and was overruled by them, they agreeing to take the responsibility of the 
concealment. This would take off" somewhat from the hypocrisy of the 



MRS. HOOKER TO IIENRY WARD. 513 

thing, but leaves the original crime as open to condemnation as ever. . But 
enough of this. Only let me request you to keep me informed of all that 
occurs, and do not rely upon my getting the news from the papers. 1 see 
by an extract from the Boston Advertiser that Mrs. W. has employed two 
Boston lawyers (it gives their names) to bring suit against the Republican 
and Womcni's Journal, so that it looks as if the exposure is near at hand. 
I want to say one word more, however. Can you not let the report get 
out after the II. matter becomes public, without being exactly responsible 
for it, that you have kept up friendship with Mrs. W. in the hope of influ- 
encing her not to publish the story, you having learned its truth — and that 
is substantially the fact as I have understood it — and that you gave up 
going to Europe with me so as to be at home, and comfort II. when the 
truth came out, as you expected it to do in the course of the summer? 
This will give an appearance of self-sacrifice to your affiliation with her, 
and will explain your not coming abroad with me — a fact which has a very 
unwife-like look. I know that you will otherwise be regarded as holding 
Mrs. W.'s views, and that we shall be regarded as living in some discord, 
and probably (by many people) as practising her principles. It would be 
a great relief to me to have your relations to Mrs. W. explained in this 
way, so creditable to your heart. There is not half the untruth in it that 
there has been all along in my pretended approval of Mrs. Woodhull's 
course, and yet people think me an honest man. I have lied enough about 
that to ruin the character of an average man, and have probably damaged 
myself by it. * * * 

After Beecher had seen these letters of his sister, Mrs. 
Hooker, he came to me, in trouble and alarm, and handed me 
all the letters, together with one under the date of November 
27th, which I herewith produce, with the enclosure, cut from 
the Hartford Times, to which it alludes. It is marked " JSf 
9":— 

Hartford, Wednesday, 27th, 1872. 

Dear Brother : — Read the enclosed, clipped from the Times of this 
city last evening. [See enclosure below. J I can endure no longer. I 
must see you and persuade you to write a paper which I will read, going 
alone to your pulpit and taking sole charge of the services. I shall leave 
here on eight A. M. train Friday morning, and unless you meet me at 

Forty-second street station, I shall go to Mrs. 's house, opposite 

Young Men's Christian Association, No. — Twenty-third street, where I 

shall hope to see you during the day. Mrs. kindly said to me, when 

last in New York, "My daughter and I are now widows, living quietly in 
our pleasant home, and I want you to come there, without warning, when- 

22* 



514 BEECHER' S APPREHENSIONS. 

ever you are in New York, unless you have other friends whom you prefer 
to visit." 

So I shall go as if on a shopping trip, and stay as long as it seems best. 

I would prefer going to Mrs. Tiiton's to anywhere else, but I hesitate to 
ask her to receive me. 

I feel sure, however, that words from her should go into that paper,- and 
.with her consent I could write as one commissioned from on high. 

Do not fail me, I pray you ; meet me at noon on Friday as you hope to 
meet your own mother in heaven. In her name I beseech you, and I will 
take no denial. Ever yours, in love unspeakable, Belle. 

[Enclosure mentioned in above letter.] 

" Eli Perkins," of the New York Commercial, a prominent republican 
paper, has this to say : — 

" Nast's very boldness —his terrible aggressiveness- is what challenges 
admiration and makes Harper's Weekly a success. 

" When I asked him if he didn't think it a great undertaking to attack 
Mr. Greeley, he said : — 

" ' Yes ; but I knew he was an old humbug. I knew I was right, and I 
knew right would win in the end. I was almost alone, too. The people 
were fooled with Greeley, as they are fooled with Beecher, and he will 
tumble further than Greeley yet.' 

t "We had a talk about Beecher and Tilton, and putting this with other 
conversations with personal friends of Mr. Tilton and with newspaper men 
in New York, I am satisfied that a terrible downfall surely awaits the one 
who has erred and conceals it." 

Beecher then informed me of his apprehension that his sis- 
ter, in her anxiety that he should do his duty in presenting 
this truth as she understood it, and in protecting Mrs. Wood- 
hull from the consequences of having published the truth, 
from which she was then suffering, would go into his pulpit 
and insist upon declaring that the Woodhull publication was 
substantially true ; and he desired me to do what in me lay to 
prevent such a disaster. I suggested to him that he should 
see Mrs. Hooker, speak to her kindly, and exhort her not to 
take this course, and that Tilton should see her and so far shake 
her confidence in the truth of the story as to induce her to 
doubt whether she would be safe in making the statement 
public. In this course Beecher agreed, and such arguments 
and inducements were brought to bear upon Mrs. Hooker as 
were in the power of all three of us, to prevent her from doing 
that which would have certainly brought on an exposure of the 
whole business. During the consultation between Beecher and 



HE WAS THANKFUL. 515 

myself as to the means of meeting Mrs. Hooker's intentions, 
no suggestion was ever made on the part of Beeeher that his 
sister was then or had been at any other time insane. 

All these letters I received from Beeeher, and they are those 
to which he alludes in his communication of the lih instant as 
the letters of his sister and brother delivered to me, and which 
I did not believe that I could honorably give him up, because 
I thought — and I submit to the committee I was right in 
thinking — that they form a part of this controversy, and were 
not, as he therein alleged, simply given to my keeping as part 
of his other papers, which he could not keep safely on account 
of his own carelessness in preserving documents. 

Beeeher was exceedingly anxious that Tilton should repudiate 
the statement published by Woodhull, and denounce her for its 
publication, and he drew up, upon my memorandum book, the 
form of a card to be published by Tilton over his signature ; 
and asked me to submit it to him for that purpose, which I 
here produce, marked "N 10:" — 

In an unguarded enthusiasm I hoped well and much of one who has 
proved utterly unprincipled. I shall never again notice her stories, and 
now utterly repudiate her statements made concerning me and mine. 

Beeeher told me to say to Tilton, substantially : — " Theodore 
may for his own purpose, if he choose, say that all his misfor- 
tune has come upon him on account of his dismissal from the 
Union and the Independent, and on account of the offence 
which I committed against him ; he may take the position 
against me and Bowen that he does; yet the fact is that his 
advocacy of Mrs. Woodhull and her theories has done him the 
injury which prevents his rising. Now, in order to get support 
from me and from Plymouth Church, and in order to obtain 
the sympathy of the whole community, he must publish this 
card; and unless he does it he cannot rise." He also said the 
same thing to Tilton in my presence. To this Tilton answered 
in substance to Beeeher: — ''You know why I sought Mrs. 
Woodhull's acquaintance. It was to save my family and yours 
from the consequences of your acts, the facts about which had 
become known to her. They have now been published, and I 
will not denounce that woman to save you from the conse- 
quences of what you yourself have done." 

To resume: — After I had carried to Mr. Tilton the paper of 
apology which had reference to Beecher's adultery, and had 
received assurances that all between Tilton and Beeeher should 



516 THREE UNHAPPY CREATURES. 

be kept quiet, I immediately conveyed the information to 
Beecher. He was profuse in his professions of thankfulness 
and gratitude to me for what he said were my exertions in his 
behalf. Soon after that I was taken sick, and while on my 
sick bed, on the 7th of February, I received the following letter 
from Beecher, marked " :" — 

February 7th, 1871. 

My Dear Mr. Moulton : — I am glad to send you a book which you 
will relish, or which a man on a sick bed ought to relish. I wish that I 
had more like it, and that I could send you one every day, not as a repay- 
ment of your great kindness to me — for that can never be repaid, not 
even by love, which I give you freely. 

Many, many friends has God raised up to me ; but to no one of them 
has he given the opportunity and the wisdom so to serve me as you have. 
My trust in you is implicit. You have also proved yourself Theodore's 
friend and Elizabeth's. Does God look down from heaven on three un- 
happy creatures that more need a friend than these? 

Is it not an intimation of God's intent of mercy to all, that each one of 
these has in you a tried and proved friend? But only in you are we three 
united. Would to God, who orders all hearts, that by your kind mediation 
Theodore, Elizabeth and I could be made friends again. Theodore will 
have the hardest task in such a case ; but has he not proved himself capa- 
ble of the noblest things? 

I wonder if Elizabeth knows how generously he has carried himself 
toward me? Of course, I can never speak with her again, except with his 
permission, and I do not know that even then it would be best. My 
earnest longing is to see her in the full sympathy of her nature at rest in 
him and to see him once more trusting her and loving her with even a 
better than the old love. I am always sad in such thoughts. Is there any 
way out of this night? May not a day star arise? Truly yours always, 
with trust and love, Hexry Ward Beecher. 

On the same day there was conveyed to me from Beecher a 
request to Tilton that Beecher might write to Mrs. Tilton, be- 
cause all parties had then come to the conclusion that there 
should be no communication between Beecher and Mrs. Tilton 
or Beecher and Tilton, except with my knowledge and consent, 
and I had exacted a promise from Beecher that he would not 
communicate with Mrs. Tilton or allow her to communicate 
with him unless I saw the communication, which promise, I 
believe, was, on his part, faithfully kept, but as I soon found, 
was not on the part of Mrs. Tilton. 



WHOLLY IN MOULTON'S HANDS. 517 

Permission was given to Beecher to write to Mrs. Tilton, 
and the following is his letter, here produced, marked " P " : — 

Brooklyn, Feb. 7th, 1871. 

My Dear Mrs. Tilton : — When I saw you last I did not expect ever to 
see you again or to be alive many days. God was kinder to me than were 
my own thoughts. The friend whom God sent to me (Mr. Moulton) has 
proved above all friends that ever I had, able and willing to help me in 
this terrible emergency of my life. His hand it was that tied up the storm 
that was ready to burst upon our head. I am not the less disposed to trust 
him from finding that he has our welfare most deeply .and tenderly at heart. 
You have no friend (Theodore excepted) who has it in his power to serve 
you so vitally, and who will do it with so much delicacy and honor. I 
beseech of you, if my wishes have yet any influence, let my deliberate 
judgment in this matter weigh with you. It does my sore heart good to 
see in Mr. Moulton an unfeigned respect and honor for you. It would 
kill me if he thought otherwise. He will be as true a friend to your honor 
and happiness as a brother could be to a sister's. In him we have a com- 
mon ground. You and I may meet in him. The past is ended. But is 
there no future? — no wiser, higher, holier future? May not this friend 
stand as a priest in the new sanctuary of reconciliation, and mediate and 
bless you, Theodore, and my most unhappy self ? Do not let my earnest- 
ness fail of its end; you believe in my judgment. I have put myself 
wholly and gladly in Moulton's hands, and there I must meet you. This 
is sent with Theodore's consent, but he has not read it. Will you return 
it to me by his hands? I am very earnest in this wish for all our sakes, as 
such a letter ought not to be subject to even a chance of miscarriage. 

Your unhappy friend, H. W. Beecher. 

This was a letter of commendation, so that Mrs. Tilton 
might trust me, as between her and her husband, as fully as 
Beecher did. In the meanwhile Mr. Beecher's friends were 
continually annoying him and writing him about Tilton and 
the rumors that were afloat with regard to both, and on the 
13th of February, Beecher received the following letter from 
his nephew, F. B. Perkins, which he (Beecher) handed me, 
with a draft of a reply, on the 23d of the same February, 
which he sent without showing me again and upon that draft 
I made the following note. I herewith produce these docu- 
ments, marked " Q," " R " and " S " respectively : — 

Box 44, Station D, > 

New York, February 13th, 1871. 5 
My Dear Unclk : — After some consideration I decide to inform you of 



518 FREDERICK PERKINS WRITES. 

a matter concerning you. Tilton has been justifying or excusing his re- 
cent intrigues with women by alleging that you have been detected in the 
like adulteries, the same having been hushed up out of consideration for the 
parties. This I know. 

You may, of course, do what you like with this letter. I suppose such 
talk dies quickest unanswered. I have thought it best to let you know 
what is being said about you, and by whom, however ; for, whether you 
act in the matter or not, it has been displeasing to me to suppose iruch 
things done without your knowledge. 1 have thought other people base, 
but Theodore Tilton has in this action dived into the very sub-cellar of the 
very backhouse of infamy. In case you should choose to let him know of 
this, I am responsible and don't seek any concealment. Very truly yours, 

To Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. F. B. Perkins. 

P. S. — I cannot say Tilton said " adulteries." He was referring to his 

late intrigues with Mrs. and others, however he may have described 

them. What I am informed of is the excuse by implicating you in 
" similar " affairs. P. B. P. 

February 23d, 1871. 

My Dear Fred : — Whatever Mr. Tilton formerly said against me — and 
I know the substance of it — he has withdrawn and frankly confessed that 
he had been misled by the statements of one who, when confronted, backed 
down from his charges. 

In some sense I am in part to blame for his indignation. For I lent a 
credulous ear to reports about him, which I have reason to believe were 
exaggerated or wholly false. After a full conference and explanation there 
remains between us no misunderstanding, but mutual good will and recon- 
ciliation have taken the place of exasperation. Of course, I shall not 
chase after rumors that will soon run themselves out of breath if left 
alone. If my friends will put their foot silently on any coal or hot embers 
and crush them out, without talking, the miserable lies will be as dead in 
New York in a little time as they are in Brooklyn. But I -do not any the 
less thank you for your affectionate solicitude and for your loyalty to my 
good name. I should have replied earlier; but your letter came when I 
was out of town. I had to go out again immediately. If the papers do 
not meddle, this slander will fall still-born — dead as Julius Ca?sar. If a 
sensation should be got up, of course there are enough bitter enemies to 
fan the matter and create annoyance, though no final damage. I am your 
affectionate uncle, H. W. B. 

[Note by Moulton in relation to the above.] 

H. W. Beecher agreed to hold this letter over for consideration, but 
sent it before seeing me again. I at first approved of the letter, but 



MRS. MORSE HAS HER SAT. 519 

finally concluded to consult with T. T., who offered a substitute, the sub- 
stance of which will be found in pencil on copy of II. W. 13. 's reply to P. 

Following is a copy of the substitute referred to: — 
An enemy of mine, as I now learn, poisoned the mind of Theodore Til- 
ton by telling him stories concerning me. T. T. being angered against me 
because Iliad quoted similar stories against him, which I had heard from 
the same party, retaliated. Theodore and I, through a mutual friend, 
were brought together, and found upon mutual explanations that both were 
victims of the same slanderer. 

No further correspondence was received from Perkins in this 
connection to my knowledge except the following note to Til- 
ton, herewith produced and marked "T": — 

May 20th, 1871. 
Mr. Tilton : — If there had not been others by I would have said to you 
at meeting you this noon what I say now : — Our acquaintance is at an end, 
and if we meet again you will please not recognize me. 

F. B. Perkins. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Morse, the mother-in-law of Mr. Tilton, 
who w T as from time to time an inmate of his family in Livings- 
ton street, had, as I was informed, both by Mr. and Mrs. Til- 
ton, learned from her daughter the criminal relationship here- 
tofore existing between Beecber and herself, and who could not 
understand why that matter had been settled, and who had 
not been told how it bad been adjusted, and who had had a 
most bitter quarrel with Tilton, accusing him of not having 
so carried his affairs as to keep what fortune he had, and who 
had called upon Beecber about the relations between Tilton 
and Mrs. Tilton, and who had, as Beecher had informed me, 
filled the minds of Mrs. Beecher and himself with stories of 
Tilton's infidelity and improper conduct to his wife, wrote the 
following letter to Beecher, under date of January 27th, 1871, 
which he delivered to me the next day, as appears by my mem- 
orandum thereon, together with the draft of an answer which 
he said he proposed to send to Mrs. Morse. Her letter is here- 
with produced, marked "U" and Mr. Beecher's draft of reply 
marked "V," and are as follows : — 

[Received January 27th, 1871 ; received from II. W. B. January 28th, 
1871.] 

Mr. Beecher; — As you have not seen fit to pay any attention to the 
request I left at your house now over two weeks since, I will take this 



520 SHE WRITES TO BEECHER. 

method to inform you of the state of things in Livingston street. The 
remark you made to me at your own door was an enigma at the time, and 
everyday adds to the mystery. "Mrs. Beecher has adopted the child." 
" What child," I asked. You replied, "Elizabeth." 

Now, I ask what earthly sense was there in that remark? Neither Mrs. 
B., yourself nor I can have done anything to ameliorate her condition. 
She has been for the last three weeks with one very indifferent girl. T. 
has sent ****** with the others away, leaving my sick and distracted child 
to care for all four children night and day, without fire in the furnace or 
anything like comfort or nourishment (sic) in the house. She has not 
seen any one. He says, " She is mourning for her sin" If this be so, 
one twenty-four hours under his shot, I think, is enough to atone for a 
lifelong sin, however henious (sic). I know that any change in his affairs 
would bring more trouble upon her and more suffering. I did not think 
for a moment when I asked Mrs. B. as to your call there, supposing she 
knew it, of course, as she said you would not go there without her. 

I was innocent of making any misunderstanding if there was any. You 
say, " Keep quiet." I have all through her married life done so, and we 
now see our eror (sic). It has brought him to destruction, made me 
utterly miserable, turned me from a comfortable home and brought his 
own family to beggary. I don't, believe if his honest debts were paid he 
would have enough to buy their breackfast (sic). This she could endure 
and thrive under, but the publicity he has given to this recent and most 
crushing of all trouble is what's taken the life out of her. I know of 
twelve persons whom he has told, and they in turn have told others. I had 
thought we had as much as we could live under from his neglect, and un- 
governable temper. But this is the death blow to us both, and I doubt not 
Florence has hers. Do you know when I hear of you cracking your jokes 
from Sunday to Sunday, and think of the misery you have brought upon 
us, I think with the Psalmist, "There is no God." Admitting all he says 
to be the invention of his half-drunken brain, still the effect upon us is the 
same, for all he's told believe it. Now he's nothing to do, he makes a 
target of her night and day. I am driven to this extremity — to pray for 
her release from all suffering by God's taking her to Himself, for if there's 
a heaven I know she'll go there. 

The last time she was in this house she said : — " Here I feel I have no 
home, but on the other side I know I shall be more than welcome." Oh, 
my precious child ! how my heart bleeds over you in thinking of your 
sufferings. Can you do anything in tlte matter? 

Must she live in this suffering condition of mind and body with no alevi- 
ation? (sic.) 

You or any one else who advises her to live with him when he is 



HIS REPLY. 521 

doing all he can to kill her by slow torture is anything but a friend. 

I don't know if you can understand a sentence I've written, but I'm re- 
lieved somewhat by writing. The children are kept from me, and I have 
not seen my dicing (sic) child but once since her return from this house. 

I thought the least you could do was to put your name to a paper to help 
reinstate my brother (in the Custom House). Elizabeth was as dis- 
appointed as myself. He is still without employment, with a sick wife 
and five children to feed, behind with rent, and everything else behind- 
hand. 

If your wife has adopted Lib (sic) or you sympathize with her, I pray 
you do something for her relief before it is too late. He swears so soon 
as her breath leaves her body he will make this whole tiling public, and 
this prospect, I think, is one thing which keeps her living. I know of no 
other. She's without nourishment (sic) for one in her state, and in want 
— actual want. They would both deny it, no doubt, but it's true. 

Mrs. Judge Morse : — 

My Dear Madam : — I should be very sorry to have you think I had no 
interest in your troubles. My course toward you hitherto should satisfy 
you that I have sympathized with your distress. But Mrs. Beecher and I, 
after full consideration, are of one mind — that, under present circum- 
stances, the greatest kindness to you and to all will be, in so far as we are 
concerned, to leave to time the rectification of all the wrongs, whether 
they prove real or imaginary. 

It will be observed that in the letter of Mrs. Morse she says 
Tilton had sent ****** w i^ ^he others away. I pur- 
posely omit the name of this young girl. There was a reason 
why it was desirable that she should be away from Brooklyn. 
That reason, as given me by Mr. and Mrs. Tilton, was this : — 
She had overheard conversations by them concerning Mrs. Til- 
ton's criminal intimacy with Beecher, and she had reported 
these conversations to several friends of the family. Being 
young, and not knowing the consequences of her prattling, it 
seemed proper, for the safety of the two families, that she 
should be sent to a distance to school, which was accordingly 
done. She was put at a boarding school at the West, and the 
expenses of her stay there were privately paid through me by 
Beecher, to whom I had stated the difficulty of having the girl 
remain in Brooklyn; and he agreed with us that it was best 
that she should be removed and offered to be at the cost of 
her schooling. The bills were sent to me from time to time as 
they became due, a part of them through Mrs. Tilton. Pre- 



522 THA T TO UNO LAD T. 

vious to her going away she wrote the following letters to Mrs. 
Tilton— marked '■ W" and "X"— and they were sent to me by 
Mrs. T. as part of these transactions: — 

Brooklyn, Jan. 10th, 1871. 
My Dear Mrs. Tilton : — I want to tell you something. Your mother, 
Mrs. Morse, has repeatedly attempted to hire me, by offering me dresses 
and presents, to go to certain persons and tell them stories injurious to the 
"character of your husband. I have been persuaded that the kind inten- 
tions shown me by Mr. Tilton for years were dishonorable demonstrations. 
I never, at the time, thought that Mr. Tilton's caresses were for such a 
purpose. I do not want to be made use of by Mrs. Morse or any one else 
to bring trouble on my two best friends, you and your husband. Bye by. 

****** 

These notes are in Mrs. Tilton's handwriting and on the 
same paper used by her in correspondence with me. 

January 12th. 
My Dear Mrs. Tilton : — The story that Mr. Tilton once lifted me from 
my bed and carried me screaming to his own, and attempted to violate my 
person is a wicked lie. Yours truly, ****** 

While this young lady was at school she did inform a friend 
of Mrs. Tilton, Mrs. P., of the stories of the family relations. 
These stories were written to Brooklyn, and came to the 
knowledge of my friends, creating an impression upon their 
minds unfavorable to Mr. Tilton, and might possibly lead to 
the reopening of the scandal. I therefore took pains to trace 
them back, and found that they came from Mrs. P., to whom 
the schoolgirl had told them. I therefore called upon Tilton 
and asked if these stories could not be stopped. Soon after- 
ward he produced to me a letter, dated the 8th of November, 
1872, written by Mrs. Tilton, with a note to me on the back 
thereof, to disabuse Mrs. P.'smind as to the girl's disclosures. 
The letter is here produced, marked "Y : " — 

Brooklyn, Nov. 8th, 1872. 

My Dear Mrs. P. : — I come to you in this fearful extremity, burdened 
by my misfortunes, to claim your promised sympathy and love. * * * 
I have mistakenly felt obliged to deceive ****** these two years, that my 
husband had made false accusations against me which he never has to her 
or any one. 

In order that he may not appear on his defence, thus adding the terrible 
exposure of a lawsuit, will you implore silence on her part against any 



****** BILL. 523 

indignation which she may feel against him ; for the one only ray of light 
and hope in this midnight gloom is his entire sympathy and co-operation 
in my behalf. 

A word from you to Mr. D*** will change any unfriendly spirit which 
dear mother may have given him against my husband. 

You know I have no mother's heart, that will look charitably upon all, 
save you. Affectionately, your child, Elizabeth. 

Of course you will destroy this letter. 

Tuesday, Jan. 18th, 1872. 

Deak Francis : — Be kind enough to send me $50 for ******. I want 
to enclose it in to-morrow's mail. Yours gratefully, Elizabeth. 

Also, I produced — out of the order of time — a letter of Mrs. 
Tilton, marked " Y 2," sent to me a 3 r ear afterwards for money 
for the purpose of paying this young person's school expenses, 
and also a statement of accounts and letters of transmission, 
and note acknowledging receipt for quarter ending June, 1871, 
from the principal of that school, marked "Z 1" and "Z 2." 
All these sums were paid by Beecher, and I forwarded the money 
to settle them through Mrs. Tilton, or sent the money directly 
to the principal of the school at her request : — 

statement of account. 

Female Seminary. 

Miss ****** ****** 

rp Q ****** J) r ^ 

For boarding $76 50 

For tuition, primary class 10 80 

For washing 7 23 

For Are (two months) 4 00 

For music (double lessons), $36 ; use piano, $4 50 40 50 

For advanced items — 

Books and stationery $4 14 

Music ? 5 10 

Physician and medicine 6 00 

Seat in church 1 00—16 24 

Amount $155 27 

June, 1871. 

, June 8th, 1871. 

Mrs. Tilton : — I send you with this a statement of Miss ******' s bill 
for the past half school year. 

****** is doing very well in her studies, and is quite a favorite with us. 



524: TILTON' 8 FEELINGS. 

Sometimes she is not very well, but I think, on the whole, her health is 
improving. 

Could you not come and make us a visit and bring Mr. Tilton with you? 
A little rest would do you both good. Very respectfully yours, 



****** i s making very good progress in music and in some of her com- 
mon branches, as arithmetic, geography and spelling. 

Seminary, Dec. 18th, 1873. 

F. D. Moulton, Esq. : — 

Dear Sir : — Yours containing check for $200 in full for Miss ******' s 
school bill is received. This pays all her indebtedness to this date. Very 
truly yours, , 

Beecher was very anxious to ascertain, through me, the 
exact condition of Tilton's feelings towards him, and how far 
the reconciliation was real, and to get a statement in writing 
that would seem to free him (Beecher) from imputation there- 
after. I more than once applied to Tilton to get a statement 
of his feelings towards Beecher, and received from him, on the 
7th of February, 1871, the following letter, which I produce, 
marked "A A:" — 

Brooklyn, Feb. 7th, 1871. 

My Very Dear Friend : — In several conversations with me you have 
asked about my feelings toward Mr. Beecher, and yesterday you said the 
time had come when you would like to receive from me an expression of 
them in writing. I say, therefore, very cheerfully, that, notwithstanding 
the great suffering which he has caused to Elizabeth and myself, I bear 
him no malice, shall do him no wrong, shall discountenance every project 
(by whomsoever proposed) for any exposure of his secret to the public, 
and (if I know myself at all) shall endeavor to act toward Mr. Beecher as 
I would have him in similar circumstances act toward me. 

I ought to add that your own good offices in this case have led me to a 
higher moral feeling than I might otherwise have reached. Ever yours 
affectionately, Theodore Tilton. 

To Frank Moulton. 

From that time everything was quiet. Nothing occurred to 
mar the harmony existing between Tilton and Beecher, or the 
kindly relations between Tilton and Mrs. Tilton, during the 
summer of 1871, except idle gossip which floated about the 
city of Brooklyn, and sometimes was hinted at in the newspa- 
pers, but which received no support in any facts known to the 
gossiper or the writer, or through any communication of Mr. 



GONE TO GRASS. 525 

or Mrs. Tilton or Mr.Beecher. And I received no letters from 
Beecher alluding to this subject upon any topic until his re- 
turn, on the 30th September, from his vacation, showing that 
in fact the settlement was enabling him to regain his health 
and spirits. I produce this note, marked "BB: " — 

Saturday, September 30th, 1871. 

My Dear Frtend : — I feel bad not to meet you. My heart warms to 
you, and you might have known that I should be here, if you loved me as 
much as I do you. Well, it's an inconstant world ! Soberly, I should be 
glad to have you see how hearty I am, ready for work and hoping for a 
bright year. 

I have literally done nothing for three months, but have " gone to 
grass." Things seem almost strange to come back among men and see 
business going on in earnest. 

I will be here on Monday at ten A. M. I am, my dear Frank, truly and 
gratefully yours, Henry Ward Beecher. 

Taking advantage of this lull in the controversy it may be 
as convenient here as anywhere to state the relations of Mrs. 
Tilton to the matter and her acts toward the several parties. 
I shall be pardoned if I do it with care, because my statement, 
unhappily for us both, must be diametrically opposite to one 
published as hers. I had been on terms very familiar, visiting 
at Mr. Tilt( in's house. I had seen and known Mrs. Tilton well 
and kindly on my part, and I believed wholly so on hers, and, 
as I have before stated, I had never known or suspected or seen 
any exhibition of inharmony between her and her husband 
during those many familiar visits, and of course I had no sus- 
picion of infidelity upon the part of either toward the other. 
The first intimation of it which came to me was in the exhibi- 
tion of her original confession, of which I have before spoken. 
The first time I saw that confession was on the 30th of Decem- 
ber, 1870. The first communication I had from Mrs. Tilton 
after I had read her confession on the Friday evening, as before 
stated, was on the next morning, the 31st of December, 1870, 
the date being fixed by the fact cited in her letter showing 
that she gave her retraction to Beecher on the evening previ- 
ous. The letter from her is as follows, marked "CO: " — 

Saturday Morning. 
My Dear Friend Frank : — I want you to do me the greatest possible 
favor. My letter which you have and the one I gave Mr. Beecher at his 
dictation last evening ought both to be destroyed. 



526 MBS. TILTOWS LETTERS. 

Please bring both to me and I will burn them. Show this note to Theo- 
dore and Mr. Beecher. They will see the propriety of tlr's request. 
Yours truly, E. K. Tilton. 

I could not, of course, accede to this request of Mrs. Tilton, 
because I had pledged myself to Beecher that her retraction 
on the one side and her confession to Tilton on the other — 
which are the papers she refers to as " my letter which you 
have and the one I gave Mr. Beecher" — should not be given 
up, but should be held for the protection of either as against 
the other. 

I learned in my interview with Beecher on the 1st day of 
January, 1871, that he had been told by his wife and others 
{that Mrs. Tilton desired a separation from her husband on ac- 
count of his supposed infidelities to her, and that Mrs. Tilton 
had applied to Mrs. Beecher for advice upon that subject. 
This being the first I had heard of asserted infidelity of Tilton 
to his marriage vows, either the next day or second day after I 
asked Mrs. Tilton if it were so and if she had ever desired a 
separation from her husband on that or any other account — ■ 
wishing to assure myself of the facts upon which I w T as to act 
as mediator and arbitrator between the parties. She stated to 
me that she had not desired a separation from her husband, 
but that application had been made to Mr. and Mrs. Beecher 
through her mother, upon her own resjxmsibility, to bring it 
about, and on the 4th day of January she sent me the follow- 
ing letter, which, although dated January 4th, 1870, was actu- 
ally written January 4lh, 1871, and dated 1870, as is a common 
enough mistake by most persons at the beginning of a new 
year. But it bears internal evidence of the time of its date, 
and also I know that I received it at that time, it being impos- 
sible that it should have been a year previous. I produced it, 
marked "DD:"— 

No. 174 Livingston Street, } 

Brooklyn, Jan. 17th, 1870 (?). > 
Mr. Francis D. Moulton : — 

My Dear Friend : — In regard to your question whether I have ever 
sought a separation from my husband, I indignantly deny that such was 
ever the fact, as I have denied it a hundred times before. The story that 
I wanted a separation was a deliberate falsehood, coined by my poor 
mother, who said she would bear the responsibility of this and other 
statements she might make, and communicated to my husband's enemy, 
Mrs. H. W. Beecher, and by her communicated to Mr. Bowen. / feel 



MRS. TILTON COMMUNICATIVE. 527 

outraged by the whole proceeding, and am now suffering in consequence 
more than I am able to bear. I am yours, very truly, 

Elizabeth R. Tilton. 

As bearing upon this topic of her husband's infidelity and 
her desire for separation, I produce another letter, dated Jan- 
uary 13th, 1871, written by Mrs. Tilton, and addressed to the 
person whose name I have hitherto and still suppress, as the 
one with whom Bowen had alleged an improper connection 
with Tilton, and because of which improper connection 
Beecher had been informed Mrs. Tilton was unhappy and 
desired the separation. It is marked " EE " : — 

174 Livingston Street, > 

Brooklyn, Jan. 13th, 1871. 5 
Mr Dear Friend and Sister : — I was made very glad by your letter, 
for your love to me is most grateful, and for which I actually hunger. 
You, like me, have loved and been loved, and can say with Mrs. Brown- 
ing:— 

" Well enough I think we've fared, 
My heart and I." 

But I find in you an element to which I respond ; when or how I am not 
philosopher enough of the human mind to understand. I cannot reason — 
only feel. 

I wrote to you a reply on the morning of my sickness, and tinged with 
fears of approaching disaster, so that when mail day arrived I was safely 
over my sufferings, with a fair prospect of returning health. I destroyed 
it lest its morbid tone might shadow your spirit. I am now around my 
house again, doing very poorly what I want to do well. All these am- 
bitions and failures you know, darling, and when, in your last letter to 
Theodore — those good, true letters — you tell indirectly of your life with 
your parents, I caught and felt the self-sacrifice, admired and sincerely 
appreciated your rare qualities of heart and mind. I am a more demon- 
strative and enthusiastic lover of God manifested in his children than you 
will believe, and my memories of you fill me with admiration and delight. 
I have caught up your card picture which we have, in such moments and 
kissed it again and again, praying, with tears, for God's blessing to follow 
you and to perfect in us three the beautiful promise of our nature. But, 

my sweet and dear , I realize in these months of our acquaintance 

how almost impossible it is to bring out these blossoms of our heart's 
growth — God's gifts to us — to human eyes. Our pearls and flowers are 
caught up literally by vulgar and base minds that surround us on every 



528 HER SPIRIT WILLING. 

side, and so destroyed or abused that we know them no longer as our own, 
and thus God is made our only hope. 

My dear, dear sister, do not let us disappoint each other. I expect 
much from you — 30U do of me. Not in the sense of draining or weariness 
to body or spirit — but trust and faith in human hearts. Does it not exist 
between us? I believe it! My husband has suffered much with me in a 
cruel conspiracy made by my poor suffering mother, with an energy wor- 
thy of a better cause — to divorce us by saying that /was seeking it because 
of Theodore's infidelity, making her feelings mine. 

These slanders have been sown broadcast. I am quoted everywhere as 
the author of them. Coming in this form and way to Mr. Bowen they 
caused his immediate dismission from both the Independent and Union. 
Suffering thus, both of us, so unjustly — (I knew nothing of these plans)— 
anxiety night and day brought on my miscarriage ; a disappointment I 
have never before known — a love babe it promised, you know. I have had 

sorrow almost beyond human capacity dear . It is my mother! That 

will explain volumes to your filial heart. Theodore has many secret 
enemies, I find, besides my mother, but with a faithfulness renewed and 
strengthened by experience we will, by silence, time and patience, be vic- 
torious over them all. My faith and hope are very bright, now that I am 
off the sick-bed, and dear Frank Moulton is a friend indeed. (He is 
managing the case with Mr. Bowen.) We have weathered the storm, and, 
I believe, without harm to our Best. "Let not your heart be troubled," 
dear sweet — I love you. Be assured of it. I wish I could come to you. 
I would help you in the care of your loved ones, for that I can do. " My 
heart bounds toward all." Then your spirit would be free to write and 
think. 

But hereunto I am not called. My spirit is willing. My dear children 
are all well. Floy, on her return at the holiday vacation, found me sick, 
and we concluded to keep her with us, and she has entered the Packer. 
Our household has, indeed, been sadly tossed about, and the children 
suffer with the parents ; but the end has come, and I write that you may 
have joy and not grief, for that is past! I am glad you love Alice. I have 
kissed her for you many times. I will teach all my darlings to love you 
and welcome your home-coming. Ralph is a fine, beautiful boy, and to be 
our only baby — very precious, therefore. Carroll is visiting Theodore's 
parents at Keyport. I hope your mother is now better and that you have 
reached the sunshine. Our spirits cannot thrive in nature's gloom. Give 
much love to your parents. I am yours, faithfully and fondly, 

Sister Elizabeth. 

This letter requires a word of explanation. It will be ob- 



EXPLAINING THE LETTER. 520 

served that in the course of the correspondence between 
Bowen and Beecher there had been claimed infidelities on the 
part of Tilton with a certain lady whose name is not disclosed, 
although well known to all the parties, and much of the accu- 
sations against Tilton connected him with that lady, and it 
was averred that they came from his wife. The above letter 
was written to that lady long after the accusations had been 
made against Tilton, and after they had been communicated to 
his wife, and I bring it in here as bearing on the question 
whether Mrs. Tilton desired a separation from her husband, as 
had been alleged, on account of his infidelities with this 
lady. 

I have already stated that I had, as a necessary precaution to 
the peace of the family and the parties interested, interdicted 
all the parties from having communication with each other — 
except the husband and wife — unless that communication was 
known to me, and the letters sent through me or shown tome. 
Mr. Tilton and Mr. Beecher, as I have before stated, both 
faithfully complied with their promise in that regard, so far as 
I know, I was away sick in the spring of 1871, as before stated, 
and went to Florida. Soon after my return Beecher placed in 
my hands an unsigned letter from Mrs. Tilton, in her hand- 
writing, undated, but marked in his handwriting, " Received 
March 8th, 1871." I here produce it, marked " FF." 

Wednesday. 

My Dear Friend : — Does your heart bound towards all as it used? So 
does mine ! I am myself again. I did not dare to tell you till I was sure ; 
but the bird has sung in my heart these four weeks, and he has covenanted 
with me never again to leave. " Spring has come."* Because I thought 
it would gladden you to know this, and not to trouble or embarrass you in 
any way I now write. Of course I should like to share with you my joy ; 
but can wait for the Beyond ! 

When dear Frank says I may once again go to old Plymouth, I will 
thank the dear Father. 

Such a communication from Mrs. Tilton to her pastor, under 
the circumstances and her promise, seemed to me to be a 
breach of good faith. But desirous to have the peace kept, 
and hoping if unanswered it might not be repeated, I did not 
show it to Tilton or inform him of its existence. 

On Friday, April 21st, 1871, Mr. Beecher received another 
letter, of that date, unsigned, from Mrs. Tilton, which he gave 
to me. It is here produced, marked " GG," as follows : — 
23 



530 NEST-HIDING. 

Friday, April 21st, 1871. 
Mr. Beecher : — As Mr. Moulton has returned will you use your influ- 
ence to have the papers in his possession destroyed? My heart bleeds 
night and day at the injustice of their existence. 

As I could not comply with this request, for reasons before 
stated, I did not show this letter to Tiiton, nor did I call Mrs. 
Tilton's attention to it. 

On the 3d of May, Mr. Beecher handed me still another let- 
ter, unsigned, but in Mrs. Tilton's handwriting, of that date, 
which is here produced, marked " HH " : — 

Brooklyn, May 3d, 1871. 
Mr. Beecher : — My future either for life or death would be happier 
could I but feel that you forgive while you forget me. In all the sad 
complications of the past year my endeavor was to entirely keep from you 
all suffering; to bear myself alone, leaving you forever ignorant of it. 
My weapons were love, a large untiring generosity and nest hiding! That 
I failed utterly we both know. But now I ask forgiveness. 

The contents of this letter were so remarkable that I queried 
within my own mind whether I ought not to show it to Tiiton; 
but as I was assured by Beecher, and verily believed, and now 
believe, that they were unanswered by him, I thought it best 
to retain it in my own possession, as I have .done until now. 
But, from the hour of its reception, what remained of faith in 
Mrs. Tilton's character for truth or propriety of conduct was 
wholly lost, and from that time forth I had no thought or care 
for her reputation only so far as it affected that of her chil- 
dren. 

After this I do not know that anything occurred between 
myself and Mrs. Tiiton of pertinence to this inquiry, or more 
than the ordinary courtesies or civilities when I called at her 
house, and I received no other communication from her until 
shortly before the question of the arbitration of the business 
between Bowen and Tiiton was determined upon. I had 
learned that Mrs. Tiiton had been making declarations which 
were sullying the reputation of her husband, and giving it to 
be understood that her home was not a happy one, because of 
the want of religious sympathy between herself and her hus- 
band, and because he did not accompany her to church as reg- 
ularly and as often as she thought he ought to do, and she 
thought it would be well for the children to do, and sometimes 
speaking of her unhappiness, without denning specially the 
cause, thus leaving for the busybodies and intermeddlers to 



LETTER TO MOULTON. 531 

infer causes of unhappiness which she did not state. I thought 
it my duty to the parties to caution her in that regard, and I 
said to her that I thought she ought not, in the presence of 
others, to upbraid her husband with their differences in relig- 
ious feeling or opinions, and that it was not well for her to 
make any statement which should show her home unhappy, or 
that she was unhappy in it, because it might lead to such 
inquiries as might break it up, as well as the settlement, which 
she was so desirous to maintain for the sake of both families — 
Mrs. Beecher's and her own. 

This conversation drew from her the following letter, marked 
"II":— 

Sunday Morning, Feb. 11th, 1872. 

My Dear Friend Francis : — All the week I have sought opportunity to 
write you, but as I cannot work in the cars as Theodore does, and the 
time at our stopping places must be necessarily given to rest, eating and 
sight-seeing, saying nothing of lecture-going, I have failed to come to you 
before. 

It was given to you to reveal to me last Sabbath evening two things (for 
which God bless you abundantly with his peace). First, the truth that 
until then I bad never seen nor felt, namely, whenever I remembered my- 
self in conversing with others to the shadowing of Theodore I became his 
enemy! And the second truth was that /hindered the reconstruction more 
than any one else. 

Whenever I become convinced I know I am immovable. Henceforth 
silence has locked my lips and the key is cast into the depths. Theo. 
need fear me no longer, for I would be the enemy of no one. 

I have not been equal to the great work of the past year. All I have 
done is to cause the utter misery of those I love best — my mother, hus- 
band, Mr. B. and my dear children. 

But how greatly I prize your counsel and criticisms you will never 
know. You do not at all terrify me, only convince, and I bless you. 

Pardon this hasty line, which I'm sure you'll do, since you forgive so 
much else. Good night. Affectionately, Elizabeth. 

After the signing of the tripartite covenant, April 2d, 1872, 
Tilton desired that I should return him the paper containing 
his wife's confession, in order, as he said, to relieve her anxiety 
as to its possibly falling into wrong hands, and she was very 
desirous that this paper should be destroyed. As I held it 
solely for her protection, and under pledge to him, I gave it to 
him, and he told me afterwards that he gave it into her hands 



532 MUTUAL CONFESSIONS. 

and that she destroyed it. She also confirmed this state- 
ment. 

Some time after that — it is impossible for me to fix the date 
precisely — I learned from Beecher that Mrs. Tilton had told 
him that when she made her confession to her husband of her 
infidelity with him (Beecher) her husband had made a like 
confession to her of his own infidelities with several other wo- 
men. This being an entirely new statement of fact to me, and 
never having heard Mrs. Tilton, in all my conversations with 
her, although she had admitted freely her own sexual inter- 
course with Beecher, make any claims that her husband had 
confessed his infidelity, or that he had been unfaithful to her, 
I was considerably surprised at this intimation made at so late 
a period, and I brought it to the attention of Tilton, in the 
form of a very strong criticism of his course towards me, that 
he had kept back so important a fact, which might have made 
a great difference as to the course that ought to be taken. 
Tilton promptly, and with much feeling, denied that he had 
ever made any such confession, or that his wife ever claimed 
that he had, and desired me to see Mrs. Tilton, and satisfy 
myself upon that point; and he went immediately with me to 
his house, that I might see Mrs. Tilton before he should have 
the opportunity to see her, after he had learned the alleged 
fact. We went to the house together and found her in the 
back parlor. On our way to the house Tilton said to me: — 
"Frank, what is the use of my trying to keep the family 
together when this sort of thing is being all the time said 
against me? You are all the time telling me that I must 
keep the peace, and forget and forgive, while these stories are 
being circulated to my prejudice." On arriving at the house I 
asked Mrs. Tilton to step into the front parlor, where we two 
were alone. I then put the question to her: — "Elizabeth, did 
you tell Mr. Beecher that when you made your confession to 
your husband of your infidelity with Beecher, your husband at 
the same time made a confession to you of his own infidelity 
with other women ? " I said, " I want to know if this is true 
for my own satisfaction." She answered, "Yes." I then 
stepped with her into the back parlor, where her husband was 
waiting, and I said to him, " Your wife says that she did tell 
Beecher that you confessed your infidelity with other women, 
at the time she made her confession to you." Elizabeth im- 
mediately said, " Why, no, I didn't tell you so. I could not 
have understood your question, because it isn't true that Theo- 



MBS. T. WRETCHED. 533 

dore ever made any such confession, and I didn't state it to 
Mr. Beecher, because it is not true." 

I was very much shocked and surprised at the denial, but 01 
course could say nothing more, and did say nothing more upon 
that subject, and left and went home. The next morning I 
received the following letter from Mrs. Tilton without date, so, 
that I am unable to give the exact date of this transaction ; 
but I know it was after the tripartite covenant. The letter is 
here produced and marked "J J.": — 

Dkar Francis : — I did not tell you two falsehoods at your last visit. 
At first I entirely misunderstood your question, thinking you had reference 
to the interview at your house the day before. But when I intelligently 
replied to you, I replied falsely, I will now put myself on record truth- 
fully. 

I told Mr. B. that at the time of my confession T. had made similar 
confes.-ions to me himself, but no developments as to persons. When you 
then asked, for your own satisfaction, " Was it so?" I told my second lie. 
After you had left I said to T., " You know I was obliged to lie to Frank, 
and 1 now say, rather than make others suifer as I now do, I must lie; for 
it is a physical impossibility for me to tell the truth." 

Yet 1 do not think, Francis, had not T.'s angry, troubled face been be- 
fore me, I would have told you the truth. 

I am a perfect coward in his presence, not from any fault of his, perhaps, 
but from long years of timidity. 

I implore you, as this is a side issue, to be careful not to lead me into 
further temptation. 

You may show this to T. or Mr. B. or any one. An effort made for 
truth. Wretchedly, Elizabeth. 

This letter was wholly unsatisfactory to me, because nothing 
had occurred the day previous in which she could possibly 
have referred. After the publication, on the 2d day of Novem- 
ber, 1872, in Woodliull and Clqflhi's Weekly, of the story of 
Tilton and Beecher's conduct in relation to Mrs. Tilton, and as 
my name was mentioned in the article as one possessing pecu- 
liar knowledge upon the whole subject, I was continually asked 
by my acquaintances, and even by strangers, upon their ascer- 
taining who I was, whether that, publication was true; and I 
found great difficulty in making an answer. A refusal on my 
part to answer would have been taken to be a confession of the 
truth of the charges. Therefore, when people inquired who 
had no nght to my confidence, I answered them in such 



534: ALLEGES HEM INNOCENCE. 

phrase as, without making a direct statement, would lead them 
to infer that the charges could not be sustained. 

In some cases I doubt not that the inquirers supposed that I, 
in fact, denit-d their truth; but upon that point I was very 
studious not directly to commit myself. Finding that my very 
silence was working injury to the cause of the suppression of 
the scandal, I told Tilton that I wished to be authorized by 
his wife to deny it. 

I thought it certainly could not possibly be true to the 
extent, and in the circumstances with the breadth, in which 
it was stated in that newspaper. Soon after I received the 
following paper, without date, from Mrs. Tilton, which is pro- 
duced and marked " KK " : — ■ 
Mr. Moulton : — 

My Dear Friend : — For my husband's sake and my children's, I hereby 
testify, with all my woman's soul, that I am innocent of the crime of im- 
pure conduct alleged against me. I have been to my husband a true wife ; 
in his love I wish to live and die. My early affection for him still burns 
with its maiden flame ; all the more for what he has borne for my sake — 
both private and public wrongs. His plan to keep back scandals long ago 
threatened against me I never approved, and the result shows it unavail- 
ing ; but few would have risked so much as he has sacrificed for others 
ever since the conspiracy began against him, two years ago. 

Having had power to strike others, he has forborne to use it, and allowed 
himself to be injured instead. No wound is so great to me as the imputa- 
tion that he is among my accusers. I bless him every day for his faith in 
me, which swerves not, and for standing my champion against all my 
accusers. Elizabeth R. Tilton. 

Upon the strength of that I thereafterwards said that Mrs. 
Tilton denied the story. About the 16th of December, 1872, 
Mr. Carpenter and Dr. Storrs undertook to look up the reports, 
with the intention, as I understood, of advising some public 
statement, or as being concerned in some investigation of the 
matter, and Mrs. Tilton wrote for them the following paper 
bearing that date, which I produce marked " LL ": — 

December 16th, 1872. ! 

In July, 1870, prompted by mj' duty, I informed my husband that Mr. 
H. W. Beecher, my friend and pastor, had solicited me to be a wife to him, 
together with all that this implied. Six months afterwards my husband 
felt impelled by the circumstances of a conspiracy against him, in which 
Mrs. Beecher had taken part, to have an interview with Mr. Beecher. 



SHE SIGNS THE PAPER. 535 

In order that Mr. B. might know exactly what I had said to my husband, 
I wrote a brief statement (I have forgotten in what form), which my hus- 
band showed to Mr. Beecher. Late the same evening Mr. B. came to me 
(lying very sick at the time) and filled me with distress, saying I had 
ruined him, and wanting to know if I meant to appear against him. This 
I ce:tainly did not mean to do, and the thought was agonizing to me. I 
then signed a paper which he wrote, to clear him in case of a trial. In 
this instance, as in most others when absorbed by one great interest or 
feeling, the harmony of my mind is entirely disturbed, and I found on 
reflection that this piper was so drawn as to place me most unjustly 
against my husband and on the side of Mr- Beecher. So in order to 
repair so cruel a blow to my long suffering husband, I wrote an explanation 
of the first paper and my signature. Mr. Moulton procured from Mr. 11. 
the statement which I gave to him in my agitation and excitement, and 
now holds it. 

This ends my connection with the case. Elizabeth R. Tilton. 

P. S. — This statement is made at the request of Mr. Carpenter, that it 
may be shown confidentially to Dr. Storrs and other friends with whom my 
husband and I are consulting. 

This paper was delivered to me, and the theory of the con- 
fession then was that Mr. and Mrs. Tilton should admit no 
more than the solicitation; but that endeavor to make an 
explanation of the business fell through, and after it was 
shown to those interested, as I was told, the paper remained 
with me. 

I received no further communication from Mrs. Tilton until 
the 25th of June of this year (1874), and that communication 
came to me in this wise. When Tilton showed me his Dr. 
Bacon's letter I most strongly and earnestly advised against its 
publication, and said to him in substance, that, while I admit- 
ted the wrong and injustice of Dr. Bacon's charges, that he 
(Mr. T.) had lived by the magnanimity of Beecher, and that 
he was a dog and a knave, when I believed he had acted a 
proper and manly part in endeavoring to shield his family, yet 
that its publication would so stir the public mind that an 
investigation would be forced upon him and Beecher in some 
manner which I could not then foresee, and that the truth 
would in all probability have to come out, or so much of it 
that Mrs. Tilton and Beecher would be dishonored and de- 
stroyed, and he himself he subjected to the severest criticism. 
Notwithstanding my advice, he was so wrought up with the 
continued assaults upon him by the friends of Beecher that he 
determined on the publication of the letter. 



536 P UBLIGA TION OF THE LETTER. 

He said to me, in substance, that as the course I had advised 
in the matter in regard to the church investigation had been 
so completely set aside by Beecher's friends, and they had so 
far ignored all propositions coming from me as to the best 
mode of disposing of the matter, they evidently did not any 
longer intend to be guided by my counsel or wishes ; and if 
Beecher and his friends set me aside in the matter, he (Mr. T.) 
could see no reason why he should any longer yield to my en- 
treaties or follow my lead. The only modification that I was 
able to get of the Bacon letter was this: — It originally read 
that Beecher had committed against him and his family "a 
revolting crime. 

I insisted that that should be changed into " an offence com- 
mitted against me," which was done, and the letter was pub- 
lished in that form. 

The reasons which actuated me to require this change by 
Tilton in his letter were in the hope that reconciliation and 
peace might still be possible. As the letter as amended would 
state an offence only, and also that an apology sufficient in 
the mind of Tilton had been made for that offence, if Beecher, 
in reply to the Bacon letter, should come out and state that it 
was true he had committed an offence against Tilton for 
which he had made the most ample apology, which had been 
accepted by Tilton as satisfactory, and as the matter was 
nobody's business but that of the parties interested, he would 
never become a party to any investigation of the subject, and 
that Tilton had acted not unjustly or unfairly toward him in 
what he had done ; that in such case the affair might possibly 
have been quieted and peace maintained. But if the words 
"revolting crime" remained in the letter all hope of reconcilia- 
ation or escaping the fullest investigation would be impossible. 
After the publication of that letter I so advised Mr. Beecher, 
his friends and counsel, but that advice was unheeded ; and I 
also gave Mr. Beecher the same advice at a consultation with 
him for which he asked in a letter, which will hereafter in its 
proper place be produced. Some days subsequent to this 
advice of mine to Tilton, I received the following letter, of 
date June 25th, 1874, from Mrs. Tilton, which is the last 
communication I have had with or from her on the subject 
It is herewith produced, and marked " MM " : — 

June 25th, 1874. 
Mr. Moulton : — It is fitting I should make quick endeavor to undo my 
injustice toward you. 



WOODUULL DESIRES JUSTICE. 537 

I learned from Theodore last night that you greatly opposed the publi- 
cation of his statement to Dr. Bacon. I had coupled you with Mr. Car- 
penter as advising it. 

Forgive me, and accept my gratitude. Eliz. R. Tilton. 

Having now placed before the committee my statement of 
the facts concerning Mrs. Tilton and the documentary evidence 
that I have to support them, and as they are diametrically op- 
posed to nearly all that Mrs. Tilton appears to declare in her 
published statement, I deem it my duty to myself and my posi- 
tion in this terrible business to say that during this affair Mrs. 
Tilton has more than once admitted to me and to another per- 
son to my knowledge — whom I do not care to bring into this 
controversy — the fact of her sexual relations with Beecher, and 
she never has once denied them other than in the written 
papers prepared for a purpose which I have already exhibited ; 
but, on tho contrary, the fact of such criminal intercourse 
being well understood by Beecher, Tilton and Mrs. Tilton to 
have taken place, my whole action in the matter was based 
upon the existence of that fact, and was an endeavor, faithfully 
carried out by me in every way possible, to protect the families 
of both parties from the consequences of a public disclosure 
of Mrs. Tilton's admitted infidelities to her husband. 

I now return to the documentary evidence, and the neces- 
sary explanations thereof, which I have of the condition of 
the affair as regards Beecher himself, after the fall of 1871, as 
disconnected with the affair of Bowen, which I have already 
explained. At about this time I received the following letter, 
marked "MM 2":— 

'No. 15 East Thirty-etghth Street, 19th, 11th, 1871. 
Rev. H. W. Beecher : — 

Dear Sir : — For reasons in which you are deeply interested as well as 
myself, and the cause of truth, I desire to have an interview with you, 
without fail, at some hour to-morrow. Two of your sisters have gone out 
of their way to assail my character and purposes, hoth by the means of the 
public press and by numerous private letters written to various persons 
with whom they seek to injure me and thus to defeat the political ends at 
which I aim. 

You doubtless know that it is in my power to strike back, and in ways 
more disastrous than anything that can come to me ; but I do not desire to 
do this. I simply desire justice from those from whom I have a right 
to expect it ; and a reasonable course on your part will assist me to it. I 
speak guardedly, but I think you will understand me. I repeat that I 
23* 



538 MOULTON GOES TO STEWWAY HALL. 

must have an interview to-morrow, since I am to speak to-morrow 
evening at Steinway Hall, and what I shall or shall not say will depend 
largely upon the result of the interview. Yours very truly, 

Victoria C. Woodhull. 
P. S. — Please return answer by bearer. 

^The foregoing letter occasioned Mr. Tilton much anxiety 
lest Mrs. Woodhull, in proceeding against Mr. Beecher and his 
sisters, would thereby involve Mrs. Tilton. 

Accordingly, knowing that Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Woodhull 
were to have an interview at my house on the next day, he 
came to it uninvited, and urged Mr. Beecher to preside on that 
evening at Steinway Hall. After Mrs. W. left Tilton repeated 
this urgency to Beecher. 

On that evening I went to Steinway Hall with Tilton, and, 
finding no one there to preside, Tilton volunteered to preside 
himself, which, I believe, had the effect of preventing Mrs. 
Woodhull's proposed attack on the Beecher family at that time. 
On the 30th of December, 1871, Mrs. Woodhull also sent a let- 
ter to Beecher desiring that he would speak at a woman's suf- 
frage convention in Washington, to be held, on the 10th, 11th 
and 12th of January following. That letter Beecher forwarded 
to me, with the following note of date the 2d of January, 1872, 
herewith produced and marked " NN : " — 

Brooklyn, Tuesday Evening, January 2d, 1872. 
My Dear Moulton : — 1. I send you V. "WVs letter to me and a reply 
which I submit to your judgment. Tell me what you think. Is it too 
long? Will she use it for publishing? I do not wisli to have it so used. 
I do not mean to speak on the platform of either of the two suffrage 
societies. What influence I exert I prefer to do on my own hook ; and I 
do not mean to train with either party, and it will not be fair to press me 
in where I do not wish to go. But I leave it for you. Judge for me. I 
have leaned on you hitherto, and never been sorry for it. 

2. I was mistaken about the Ch. Union coming out so early that I could 
not get a notice of G. Age in it. It was just the other way, to be delayed, 
and I send you a rough proof of the first page, and the Star article. 

In the paper to-morrow a line or so will be inserted to soften a little the 
touch about the Lib. Christian. 

3. Did you think I ought to keep a copy of any letters to V. W.? Do 
you think it would be better to write it again, and not say so much? Will 
you keep the letter to me, and send the other if you judge it wise? 



BEEGHER ADVISES WITH MOULTON. 539 

4. Will you send a line to my house in the morning saying what you 
conclude? 

I am full of company. 

Yours truly and affectionately, II. W. B. 

There is a paragraph in this note which needs a word of ex- 
planation. I had advised Beecher, in order that he might 
show that there was no unkindly feeling between him and 
Tilton, to publish in the Christian Union a reference to the 
Golden Age. He agreed to do so; but instead of that he had 
a notice which I thought was worse than if he had said 
nothing, and the allusion in the second paragraph of this letter 
is to a letter which I had written to Beecher upon the two 
topics — this and Mrs. Woodhull. 

A retained copy of my letter I herewith submit, marked 
«00:"— 

My Dear Sir : — First with reference to Mrs. Woodhull's letter and your 
answer; I think that you would have done better to accept the invitation 
to speak in Washington, but if lecture interferes your letter in reply is 
good enough, and will bear publication. 

With relation to your notice of the Golden Age I tell you frankly, as 
your friend, that I am ashamed of it, and would rather you had written 
nothing. Your early associations with and present knowledge of the man 
who edits that paper are grounds upon which you might have so written 
that no reader would have doubted that in your opinion Theodore Tilton's 
public and private integrity was unquestionable. If the article had been 
written to compliment the Independent it would receive my unqualified 
approval. 

On the 5th of February, 1872, I received from Mr. Beecher 

the letter which I here produce, of that date, and marked 
a pp . » 

Monday, Feb. 5th, 1872. 
f My Dear Friend : — I leave town to-day, and expect to pass through 
from Philadelphia to New Haven. Shall not be here till Friday. 

About three weeks ago I met T. in the cars going to B. He was kind. 
We talked much. At the end he told me to go on with my work without 
the least anxiety, in so far as his feelings and actions were the occasion of 
apprehension. 

On returning home- from New Haven (where I am three days in the 
week, delivering a course of lectures to the theological students), I found 
a note from E. saying that T. felt hard toward me, and was going to sec or 
write me before leaving for the West. 



540 A. YEAR OF SORROW. 

She kindly added, "Do not be cast down. . I bear this almost always, 
but the God in whom we trust will deliver us all safely. I know you do 
and are willing abundantly to help him, and I also know your embarrass- 
ments." These were words of warning, but also of consolation, for I be- 
lieve E. is beloved of God, and that her prayers for me are sooner heard 
than mine for myself or for her. But it seems that a change has come to 
^T. since I saw him in the cars. Indeed, ever since he has felt more in- 
tensely the force of feeling in society, and the humiliations which environ 
his enterprise, he has growingly felt that I had a power to help which I did 
not develop, and I believe that you have participated in this feeling. It is 
natural you should. T. is dearer to you than /can be. He is with you. 
All his trials are open to your eye daily. But I see you but seldom, and 
my personal relations, environments, necessities, limitations, dangers and 
perplexities you cannot see or imagine. If I had not gone through this 
great year of sorrow, I would not have believed that any one could pass 
through my experience and be alive or sane. I have been the centre of 
three distinct circles, each one of which required clearmindedness and 
peculiarly inventive or originating power, viz :— 

1. — The great church. 

2. — The newspaper. 

3.— The hook. 

The first 1 could neither get out of nor slight. The sensitiveness of so 
many of my people would have made any appearance of trouble or any 
remission of force an occasion of alarm and notice and have excited, when 
it was important that rumors should die and everything be quieted. 

The newspaper I did roll off, doing but little except give general direc- 
tions, and in so doing I was continually spurred and exhorted by those in 
interest. It could not be helped. 

The "Life of Christ," long delayed, had locked up the capital of the 
firm, and was likely to sink them — finished it must be. Was ever book 
born of such sorrow as that was? The interior history of it will never be 
written. 

During all this time, you, literally, were all my stay and comfort. I 
should have fallen on the way but for the courage which you inspired and 
the hope which you breathed. 

My vacation was profitable. I came back, hoping that the bitterness of 
death was passed. But T.'s troubles brought back the cloud, with even 
severer suffering. For all this fall and winter I have felt that you did not 
feel satisfied with me, and that I seemed, both to you and T., as content- 
ing myself with a cautious or sluggish policy, willing to save myself but 
not to risk anything for T. I have again and again probed my heart to see 
whether I was truly liable to such feeling, and the response is unequivocal 



H. W. LOW-SPIRITED. 541 

that I am not. No man can see the difficulties that environ me, unless he 
stands where I do. 

To say that I have a church on my hands is simple enough ; hut to have 
the hundreds and thousands of men pressing me, each one with his keen 
suspicion, or anxiety, or zeal ; to see tendencies which, if not stopped, 
would break out into ruinous defence of me ; to stop them without seeming 
to do it ; to prevent any one questioning me ; to meet and allay prejudices 
against T. which had their beginning years before this ; to keep serene, as 
if I was not alarmed or disturbed ; to be cheerful at home and among 
friends, when I was suffering the torments of the damned ; to pass sleep- 
less nights often and yet to come up fresh and full for Sunlay. All tltis 
may be talked about, but the real tiling cannot be understood from the 
outside, nor its wearing and grinding on the nervous system. 

God knows that I have put more thought and judgment and earnest 
desire into my efforts to prepare a way for T. and E. than ever I did for 
myself a hundredfold. As to the outside public, I have never lost an 
opportunity to soften prejudices, to refute falsehoods and to excite kindly 
feeling among all whom I met. I am thrown among clergymen, public 
men and generally the makers of public opinion, and I have used every 
rational endeavor to repair the evils which have been visited upon T., and 
with increasing success. 

But the roots of this prejudice are long. The catastrophe which pre- 
cipitated him from his place only disclosed feelings that had existed long. 
Neither he nor you can be aware of the feelings of classes in society, on 
other grounds than late rumors. I mention this to explain why I know 
with absolute certainty that no mere statement, letter, testimony or affir- 
mation will reach the root of affairs and reinstate them. Time and work 
will. 

But chronic evil requires chronic remedies. If my destruction would 
place him all right, that shall not stand in the way. I am willing to step 
down and out. No one can offer more than that. That I do offer: Sac- 
rifice me without hesitation, if you can clearly see your way to his safety 
and happiness thereby. I do not think that anything would be gained by 
it. I should be destroyed, but he would not be saved. E. and the chil- 
dren would have their future clouded. In one point of view I could desire 
the sacrifice on my part. Nothing can possibly be so bad as the horror of 
great darkness in which I spend much of my time. I look upon death as 
sweeter faced than any friend I have in the world. Life would be pleasant 
if I could see that rebuilt which is shattered. But to live on the sharp 
and ragged edge of anxiety, remorse, fear, despair, and yet to put on all 
the appearance of serenity and happiness, cannot be endured much 
longer. 



542 ^ PRESENT. 

I am wellnigh discouraged. If you, too, cease to trust me— to love me 
— I am alone ; I have not another person in the world to whom I could go. 

Well, to God I commit all. Whatever it may be here, it shall be well 
there. With sincere gratitude for your heroic friendship, and with sincere 
affection, even though you love me not, I am yours (though unknown to 
you), H. W. B. 

" This letter was to let me know that Elizabeth had written 
him, contrary to her promise, without my permission, and also 
to inform me of his fears as to the change in Tilton's mind, 
and its clear statement of the case as it then stood, cannot be 
further elucidated by me. On the 25th of March I received 
a portrait of Titian as a present from Mr. Beecher, with the 
following note, as a token of his confidence and respect. It is 
produced, and marked " QQ : " — 

My Dear Friend : — I sent on Friday or Saturday a portrait of Titian 
to the store to you. I hope it may suit you. 

I have been doing ten men's work this winter — partly to make up lost 
time, partly because I live under a cloud, feeling every month that I may 
be doing my last work, and anxious to make the most of it. When Esau 
sold his birthright he found " no place for repentance, though he sought it 
carefully with tears." But I have one abiding comfort. I have known 
you, and found in you one who has given a new meaning to friendship. 
As soon as warm days come I want you to go to Peekskill with me. 

I am off in an hour for Massachusetts, to be gone all the week. 

lam urging forward my second volume of "Life of Christ," for "the 
night cometh when no man can work." 

With much affection and admiration, yours truly, H. W. B. 

March 25th, 1872. Monday morning. 

After Tilton had written a campaign document against 
Grant's administration, and in favor of Mr. Greeley's election, 
Beecher discussed with me the position taken by Tilton. Beech- 
er also gave me a copy of his (Beecher's) speech opening the 
Grant campaign in Brooklyn. After the speech was delivered 
he sent me the following note of May 17th, 1872, which I here 
produce, marked "K £:"— 

May 17th, 1872. 

My Dear Frank; — I send you the only copy I have of my speech at 
the Academy of Music on Grant, and have marked the passage that we 
spoke about last night, and you will see just what I said, and that I argued 
then just as I do now. 

Pray send it back, or I shall be left without a speech ! 



MRS BEECHER LOOKS REVENGEFUL. 543 

I read Theodore's on Grant. I do not think it jnst. It is ahly written ; 
it is a case of grape shot. Yet, I think it will overact; it is too strong — 
will be likely to produce a feeling among those not already intense, that it 
is excessive. Yours sincerely and ever, H. W. B. 

Don't forget to send back iuy speech. 

About the time of this occurrence Beecher and Tilfon met 
at my house on friendly terms. In fact I cannot exhibit bet- 
ter the tone of Tilton's mind in the winter and spring of 
1871-72 than to produce here a letter, written to me at that 
time without date, but I can fix the date as early as that. It is 
here produced, and marked l, S S: " — 

Hudson River Railroad, Monday Morning. 
, My Dear Frank : — I am writing while the train is in motion — which 
accounts for the apparent drunkenness of this shaken chirography. Mrs. 
Beecher sits in the next seat. We are almost elbow to elbow in the palace 
car. She is white haired and looks a dozen years older than when I last 
had a near view of her. My heart has been full of pity for her, notwith- 
standing the cruel way in which she has treated my good name. Her face 
is written over with many volumes of human suffering. I do not think 
she has been aware of my presence, for she has been absorbed in thought 
— her eyes rooted to one spot. 

A suggestion has occurred to me which I hasten to communicate. She 
is going to Florida and may never return alive. If I am ever to be vindi- 
cated from the slanders which she has circulated, or which Mr. Bowcn 
pretends to have derived from her and Mrs. Morse, why would it not be 
well to get from her and Mrs. Morse a statement under oath (by such a 
process as last evening's documents make easy and harmless) of the exact 
narrations which they made to him and to others. 

It would be well to have them say what they said before he gets a chance 
to say what they said to him. Speak to Mr. Ward about it. Of course I 
leave the matter wholly to you and him. 

I am unusually heavy hearted this morning. My sullen neighbor keeps 
the dark and lurid past vividly before my mind. If she actually knew the 
conduct which her priestly husband has been guilty of, I believe she would 
shed his blood — or perhaps, saving him, she would wreak her wrath on his 
victims. There is a look of desperation in her eye to-day as if she were 
competent to anything bitter or revengeful. But perhaps I misjudge her 
mind. I hope I do. 

I shall not be home till Thursday afternoon instead of morning, as I said 
— leaving for Washington at nine P. M. that evening. Ever yours, 

Theodore. 



544: VICTORIA TO BEECHER. 

On the 3d of June, 1872, Beecher received from Mrs Wood- 
hull the following letter of that date, which I here produce, 
marked " T TV— 

44 Broad Street, June 3d, 1872. 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher : — 

My Dear Sir : — The social fight against me being now waged in this 
-city is becoming rather hotter than I can well endure longer, standing un- 
supported and alone, as I have until now. Within the past two weeks I 
have been shut out of hotel after hotel, and am now, after having obtained 
a place in one, hunted down by a set of males and females, who are deter- 
mined that I shall not be permitted to live even, if they can prevent it. 

Now, I want your assistance. I want to be sustained in my position in 
the Gilsey House, from which I am ordered out and from which I do not 
wish to go — and all this simply because I am Victoria C. Woodhull, the 
advocate of social freedom. I have submitted to this persecution just so 
long as I can endure to; my business, my projects, in fact everything for 
which I live suffers from it, and it must cease. Will you lend me your aid 
in this? Yours very truly, Victoria C. Woodhull. 

The above letter was sent to me enclosed in note from 
Beecher of the same date, which is here produced, and marked 
'•UU:"— 

Monday Evening, June 3d, 1872. 

My Dear Mr. Moulton : — Will you answer this? Or will you see that 
she is to understand that I can do nothing ! I certainly shall not, at any 
and all hazards, take a single step in that direction; and if it brings 
trouble — it must come. 

Please drop me a line to say that all is right — if in your judgment all is 
right. Truly yours, H. W. B. 

This letter of Mrs. "Woodhull, together with those before 
produced asking Beecher to speak at a suffrage convention, are 
all the letters I have from her to Beecher. To this letter no 
reply was made. 

After the publication of the tripartite covenant by Mr. 
Wilkeson, which I believe was on the 29th of May, 1873, the 
story of. the troubles between Beecher and Tilton was revived, 
with many rumors, and those claiming to be friends of Beech- 
er were endeavoring, as Tilton thought, to explain the terms 
of that covenant in a manner prejudicial to him. Some ene- 
mies of Beecher were endeavoring to get some clew to the 
proofs of the facts at the bottom of these scandals. 

After the publication of this " tripartite covenant" was 



TILTON'S COURTESY. 545 

made, Tilton deemed, from the comments of the press, that 
the statement reflected upon him, and he desired that in some 
way Beecher should relieve him from the imputation of having 
circulated slanderous stories about him without justification, 
for which he had apologized, and by advice of friends he pre- 
pared a card forme to submit to Beecher to have him sign and 
publish in his vindication. The original card I herewith pro- 
duce, marked "UU 1*': — 

A letter written by Theodore Tilton to Henry C. Bo wen, dated Brook- 
lyn, January 1st, 1S71, narrating charges made by Mr. Bowen against my 
character, has been made public in a community in which I am a citizen 
and clergyman, and thrust upon me, by no agency of my own, what I could 
not with propriety invite for myself — namely, an opportunity to make the 
following statements : — 

1. By the courtesy of Mr. Tilton, that letter was shown to me at the 
time it was written, and before it was conveyed to Mr. Bowen, two and a 
half years ago. By legal and other advisers, Mr. Tilton was urged to 
publish it then, without delay, or a similar statement explaining his sudden 
collision with Mr. Bowen, and his unexpected retirement as editor of the 
Union and contributor to the Independent. But although Mr. Tilton's 
public standing needed such an explanation to be made, and although he 
had my free consent to make it, yet he magnanimously refrained from 
doing so, through an unwillingness to disclose to the public Mr. Bowen's 
aspersions concerning myself. Mr. Tilton's consideration for my feelings 
and reputation, thus evinced from the beginning, has continued to the end, 
and I have never ceased to be grateful to him for an uncommon manliness 
in accepting wounds to his own reputation for the sake of preventing 
aspersions on mine. 

II. The surreptitious and unauthorized publication last Sunday of Mr. 
Tilton's letter — a publication made without the knowledge of Mr. Tilton 
or myself — gives me the right to say that Mr. Bowen long ago retracted 
his mistaken charges in the' following words, under his own hand and seal, 
dated , namely : — 

III. In addition to Mr. Bowen's voluntary statement above given, I 
solemnly pronounce the charges to be false, one and all, and to be without 
any color of reason or foundation in fact. 

IV. All my differences with Mr. Bowen, and all temporary misunder- 
standings between Mr. Tilton and myself, growing out of these, were long 
ago settled justly, amicably and in the spirit of mutual good will. 

Henry Ward Beecher. 

Beecher felt much aggrieved at this claim upon him by Til- 



546 THE AGREEMENT. 

ton, feeling that the matter had been all settled, and adjusted, 
and he answered Til ton's application in this regard by the 
letter herewith produced, under date of June 1st, marked 
"UU2:"— 

Sunday Morning, June 1st, 1873. 

My Dear Frank : — The whole earth is tranquil and the heaven is 
serene, as befits one who has about finished his world-life. I eould do 
nothing on Saturday — my head was confused. But a good sleep has made 
it like a crystal. I have determined to make no more resistance. Theo- 
dore's temperament is such that the future, even if temporarily earned, 
would be absolutely worthless — filled withabnrtt charges, and rendering 
me liable at any hour or day to be obliged to stultify all the devices by 
which we have saved ourselves. It is only fair that he should know that 
the publication of the card which he proposes would leave him far worse 
off than before. 

The agreement was made after my letter through you was written. He 
had had it a year. He had condoned his wife's fault. He had enjoined 
upon me with the utmost earnestness and solemnity'not to betray his wife, 
nor leave his children to a blight. I had honestly and earnestly joined in 
the purpose. Then this settlement was made and signed by him. It was 
not my making. He revised his part so that it should wholly suit him, 
and signed it. It stood unquestioned and unblamed for more than a year. 
Then it was published. Nothing but that. That which he did in private 
when made public excited him to fury, and he charges me with making 
him appear as one graciously pardoned by me! It was his own deliberate 
act, with which he was perfectly content till others saw it, and then he 
charges a grievous wrong home on me! 

My mind is clear. lam not in haste. I shall write for the public a 
statement that will bear the light of the judgment day. God will take care 
of me and mine. When I look on earth it is deep night. When I look to 
the heavens above I see the morning breaking. But, oh! that I could put 
in golden letters my deep sense of your faithful, earnest, undying fidelity, 
your disinterested friendship! Your noble -wife, too, has been to me one 
of God's comforters. It is such as she that renews a waning faith in 
womanhood. Now, Frank, I would not have you waste any more energy 
on a hopeless task. With such a man as T. T. there is no possible salva- 
tion for any that depend upon him. With a strong nature, he does not 
know how to govern it. With generous impulses, the undercurrent that 
rules him is self. With ardent affections, he cannot love long that which 
does not repay him with admiration and praise. With a strong, theatric 
nature, he is constantly imposed upon with the idea that a position, a great 
stroke, a coup d'etat, is the way to success. 



MY BELO VED FRANK 547 

Besides these he has a hundred good things about him, but these named 
traits make him absolutely unreliable. 

Therefore there is no use in further trying. I have a strong feeling 
upon me, and it brings great peace with it, that I am spending my last 
Sunday, and preaching my last sermon. 

Dear, Good God, I thank Thee I am indeed beginning to see rest and 
triumph. The pain of life is but a moment; the glory of everlasting 
emancipation is wordless, inconceivable, full of beckoning glory. Oh, my 
beloved Frank, I shall know you there, and forever hold fellowship with 
you, and look back and smile at the past. Your loving H. W. B. 

Meanwhile charges were preferred against Tilton for the 
purpose of having him dismissed from Plymouth church. 
This action, which seemed to threaten the discovery of the 
facts in regard to the troubles between Beecher and Tilton, 
annoyed both very much; and I myself feared that serious 
difficulty would arise therefrom. Upon consultation with 
Beecher and Tilton I suggested a plan by which that investi- 
gation would be rendered unnecessary, which was in substance 
that a resolution should be passed by the church amending its 
roll ; alleging that Tilton, having voluntarily withdrawn from 
the church some four years before, therefore the roll should be 
amended by striking off his name. This course had been sug- 
gested to me by Mr. Tilton about a year and a half before in 
answer to a letter by Beecher, dated December 3d, 1871, marked 
"TJIT3:"— 

My Dear Friend : — There are two or three who feel anxious to press 
action on the case. It will only serve to raise profitless excitement, when 
we need to have quieting. 

There are already complexities enough. 

We do not want to run the risk of the complications which, m such a 
body, no man can foresee and no one control. Once free from a sense of 
responsibility for Mm, and there would be a strong tendency for kindly 
feeling to set in, which now is checked by the membership, without at- 
tendance, sympathy, or doctrinal agreement. 

Since the connection is really formal, and not vital or sympathetic, why 
should it continue, with all the risk of provoking irritating measures? 
Every day's reflection satisfies me that this is the course of wisdom, and 
that T. will be the stronger and B. the weaker for it. 

You said that you meant to effect it. Can't it be done promptly? If a 
letter is written it had better be very short, simply announcing withdrawal, 
and perhaps with an expression of kind wishes, &c. 



548 WEST PREFERS CHARGES. 

You will know. I shall be in town Monday and part of Tuesday. Shall 
I hear from you? 
December 3d, 1871. 

But when the meeting of the church was held for that pur- 
pose it was charged there that Tilton had slandered the pastor. 
Til-ton therefore took the stand and said, in substance, that if 
he had uttered any slanders against Beecher lie was ready to 
"■answer them as God was his witness. Beecher thereupon 
stated that he had no charges to make, and the matter dropped. 
But when the resolution was passed, instead of being put so as 
to exonerate Tilton, it was declared in substance that, whereas 
certain charges had been made against him, and as he pleaded 
to those charges non-membership, his name be dropped from 
the roll. 

This action of the church very much exasperated Tilton, 
who thought that Beecher should have prevented such a result, 
and that he might have done so if he had stood by him fully 
and fairly as agreed. In that, however, I believe Tilton was 
mistaken, because Mr. William F. West, who preferred the 
charges against Tilton, did it against the wi?h of Beecher and 
without any consultation with him, as appears by the follow- 
ing letter of June 25th, 1873, produced here, and marked 
" V V." 

New York, June 25th, 1873. 
Rev. H. W. Beecher: — 

Dear Sir : — Moved by a sense of duty as a member of Plymouth 
Church, I have decided to prefer charges against Henry C. Bowen and 
Theodore Tilton, and have requested Brother Halliday to call a meeting 
of the Examining Committee in order that I may make the charges before 
them. 

Thinking that you would perhaps like to be made acquainted with these 
facts I called last evening at Mr. Beach's house, where I. was informed 
that you had returned to Peekskill. 

I therefore write you by early mail to-day. Yours very truly, 

Wm. F. West. 

Meanwhile, through the intervention of Dr. Storrs and 
others, as I understood, an ecclesiastical council had been 
called. The acts of this council in attempting to disfellowship 
Plymouth Church were very displeasing to Beecher, and 
caused him much trouble, especially the action of Dr. Storrs, 
which he expressed to me in the following letter, dated March 
25th, 1874, which is here produced and marked "WW" : — 



STOKES UTRAOEO US. 549 

i 

[Confidential.] 
My Dear Frank : — I am indignant beyond expression. Storrs' course 
has been an unspeakable outrage. After his pretended sympathy and 
friendship for Theodore he has turned against him in the most venomous 
manner — and it is not sincere. His professions of faith and affection for 
me are hollow and faithless. They are merely tactical. His object is 
plain. He is determined to force a conflict, and to use one of us to destroy 
the other if possible. That is his game. By stinging Theodore he be- 
lieves that he will be driven into a course which he hopes will ruin me. 
If ever a man betrayed another he has. I am in hopes that Theodore, 
who has borne so much, will be unwilling to be a flail in Storrs' hand to 
strike at a friend. There are one or two reasons, emphatic, for waiting 
until the end of the council before taking .any action. 

1. That the attack on Plymouth Church and the threats against Con- 
gregationalism were so violent that the public mind is likely to be absorbed 
in the ecclesiastical elements and not in the personal. 

2. If Plymouth Church is disfellow shipped it will constitute a blow at 
me and the church, far severer than at him. 

3. That if council does not disfellowship Plymouth Church, then, un- 
doubtedly, Storrs will go off into Presbyterianism, as he almost, without 
disguise, threatened in his speech, and in that case the emphasis will be 
there. 

4. At any rate, while the fury rages in council it is not wise to make 
any move that would be one among so many, as to lose effect in a degree, 
and after the battle is over one can more exactly see what ought to be 
done. Meantime I am patient as I know how to be, but pretty nearly 
used up with inward excitement, and must run away for a day or two and 
hide and sleep, or there will be a funeral. 

Cordially and trustingly yours, H. W. B. 

March 25th, 1874. 

No one can tell under first impressions what the effect of such a speech 
will be. It ought to damn Storrs. 

While these proceedings were pending Rev. Mr. Halliday, 
the assistant of Beecher, called upon him and upon me to 
endeavor to learn the facts about the difficulties between 
Beecher and Tilton. I stated to Halliday that I did not think 
that either he or the church were well employed in endeavor- 
ing to reopen a trouble which had been adjusted and settled 
by the parties to it, and that it was better, in my judgment, 
for everybody that the whole matter should be allowed to 
repose in quiet. The result of the interview between Halliday 



550 DEAR VON MOLTKE. 

and Beecher was communicated to me in the following letter, 
undated and unsigned, so that I cannot fix the date, but it is 
in Beecher's handwriting, and is here produced and marked 
"XX." 

Sunday — A. M. 
My Dear Friend — Halliday called last night. TVs interview with him 
-did not satisfy but disturbed. It was the same with Bell, who was present. 
It tended directly to unsettling. 

Your interview last night was very beneficial, and gave confidence. 
This must be looked after. 

It is vain to build if the foundation sinks under every effort. 

I shall see you at 10 :30 to-morrow—if you return by way of 49 Remsen. 

The anxiety which Beecher felt about these stories and the 
steps he took to quiet them, together with the trust he reposed 
in me and my endeavors to aid him in that behalf, may per- 
haps be as well seen from a letter headed "25, '73," which I 
believe to be June 25th, 1873, and directed "My dear Von 
Moltke," meaning myself, and kindly complimenting me with 
the name of a general having command of a battle. It is here 
produced and marked " Y Y : " — 

25th, 73. 

My Dear Von Moltke : — I have seen Howard again. He says that it 
was not from Theodore that Wilkeson got the statement, but from Car- 
penter. 

Is he reporting that view? I have told Claflin that you would come with 
Carpenter if he could be found, and at^iny rate by nine to-night (to see 
Storrs), but I did not say anything about Storrs. 

I sent Cleveland over with my horse and buggy to hunt Carpenter. 

"Will you put Carpenter on his guard about making such statements? 

From him these bear the force of coming from head-quarters. Yours 
truly and ever, H. W. Beecher. 

Meanwhile Halliday had an interview with Tilton, the result 
of which as unsettling the matter between Tilton and Beecher, 
was very anxiously awaited by Beecher, who communicated to 
me, and who was also quite as anxious that Tilton should take 
no steps by which the matter between them should get into 
the newspapers or be made in any manner a matter of contro- 
versy. With this view he stated the situation on the same 
night of the interview of Halliday and Tilton in the following 
letter, which is without date and was written in pencil in great 
haste, and is here produced, marked " ZZ " : — 



LAUSDEO! 551 

Sunday Night. 
My Dear Friend :— 

1. The Eagle ought to have nothing to-night. It is that meddling 
which stirs up our folks. Neither you nor Theodore ought to be troubled 
by the side which you served so faithfully in public. 

2. The deacon's meeting I think is adjourned. I saw Bell. It was a 
friendly movement. 

3. The only near, next danger is the women — Morrill, Bradshaw, and 
the poor, dear child. 

If papers will hold off a month we can ride out the gale and make safe 
anchorage, and then when once we are in deep, tranquil waters we will all 
join hands in a profound and genuine lans Deo! for through such a wil- 
derness only a Divine Providence could have led us undevoured by the 
open-mouthed beasts that lay in wait for our lives. 

I go on twelve train after sleepless night. I am anxious about Theo- 
dore's interview with Halliday. Will you send me a line Monday night or 
Tuesday morning, care of M. P. Kennard, Boston, Mass. 

I shall get mails there till Friday. 

I have now produced to the committee all the letters and 
documents bearing upon the subject matter of this inquiry 
which I have in my possession, either from Beecher, Tilton or 
Mrs. Tilton, previous to the Bacon letter, and there is but one 
collateral matter of which I desire to speak. 

I saw questions put in the cross-examination of Tilton, as 
published in the Brooklyn Eagle, and also published in the 
newspapers — with how much of truth I know not — that 
Mr. Samuel Wilkeson had charged that Tilton's case (in 
controversy with Bowen) was for the purpose of blackmail- 
ing him and Beecher, and that he (Wilkeson) knew that 
there had been no crime committed against Tilton or his 
household by Beecher. Beecher never intimated to me that 
he thought there was any desire on Tilton's part to black- 
mail him; and as I had the sole management of the money 
controversy between Tilton and Bowen, which I have already 
fully explained, I know there was no attempt on Tilton's part 
to blackmail or get anything more than what I believed his 
just due from Bowen To that I am certain that Mr. Wilkeson 
is wholly mistaken in that regard. 

The question whether Wilkeson knew or belie veu that any 
offence had been committed will depend upon the fact whether 
he knew of anything that had been done by Beecher or Tilton's 
wife which called for apology at the time he wrote the tripartite 



552 THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN. 

covenant. It will be remembered that the tripartite covenant 

was made solely in reference to the disclosures which Bowen 

had made to Tilton and Tilton had made to Bowen, and 

Tilton's letter sets forth that the only disclosure he made to 

Bowen of Beecher's acts towards himself were of improper 

advances made to his wife, and that he so limited his charge 

in order to save the honor of his Wife. These questions will be 

-answered by the production of the letter of April 2d, 1872, 

written by Samuel Wilkeson, which are marked " AAA": — 

Northern Pacific Railroad Company, 

Secretary's Office, 120 Broadway, 

New York, April 2d, 1872. 

My Dear Moulton : — Now for the closing act of justice and duty. 

Let Theodore pass into your hand the written apology which he holds 
for the improper advances, and do you pass it into the flames of the 
friendly fire in your room of reconciliation. Then let Theodore talk to 
Oliver Johnson. 

I hear that he and Carpenter, the artist, have made this whole affair the 
subject of conversation in the clubs. Sincerely yours, 

Samuel "Wilkeson. 

This letter, it will be observed, contains no protest against 
blackmailing, either on Tilton's part or my own, upon Beecher 
or Bowen, and is of the date of the tripartite covenant. Wilke- 
son also, hearing of Tilton's troubles, kindly offered to procure 
him a veiy lucrative employment in a large enterprise with 
which he was connected, as appears from a letter dated Jan- 
uary 1st, 1871, which I herewith produce, marked " BBB 1 :" — 

Northern Pacific Railroad Comp vny, 
January 11th, 1871. 
Dkar Tilton : — You are in trouble. I come to you with a letter just 
mailed to Jay Cooke, advising him to secure your services as a platform 
speaker to turn New England, Old England or the great West upside 
down about our Northern Pacific. 

Pluck up heart ! You shan't be trampled down. Keep quiet. Don't 
talk. Don't publish. Abide your time and it will be a very good time. 
Take my word for it. Samuel Wilkeson. 

It will be observed that this letter was dated after the letter 
of apology and after the letter of Tilton to Bowen, and Wilke- 
son could hardty have desired to employ in so grave an enter- 
prise one whom he then knew or believed to be attempting to 
blackmail his employer. And, besides, his kindly expressions 



"GOLDEN AGE" BOOSTED. 553 

and advice to Tilton seemed to me wholly inconsistent with 
such an allegation. 

I think it just, in this connection, to state a fact which bears 
in my mind upon this subject. On the 3d of May, 1873, I 
knew that Tilton was in want of money, and I took leave, with- 
out consulting him, to send him my check for $1,000 and a due 
bill for that amount to be signed by him, enclosed in a letter 
which I here produce, marked "BBB2," all of which he returned 
to me with an indorsement thereon. The following is the docu- 
ment : — 

New York, May 3d, 1873. 
Dear Theodore : — I enclose to you a check for $1,000, for which please 
sign the enclosed. Yours, ~E. 1). Moulton. 

[Endorsement on above by Tilton.] 

Dear Frank : — I can't borrow any money, for I see no way of returning 
it. Hastily, T. T. 

After the above paper was returned to me, on the same day 
I sent him the $1,000, leaving it to be a matter as between our- 
selves, and not a money transaction. 

I know, to the contrary of this, so far as Beecher is con- 
cerned, that Tilton never made any demand on him for money 
or pecuniary aid in any way or form. He asked only that 
Beecher should interpose his influence and power to protect 
him from the slanders of those who claimed to be Beecher's 
friends, wdiile Beecher himself, with generosity and kindness 
toward Tilton, which had always characterized his acts during 
the whole of this unhappy controversy, of his own motion in- 
sisted, through me, in aiding Tilton in establishing his enter- 
prise of the Golden Age, for which purpose he gave me the sum 
of $5,000, which I was to expend in such manner as I deemed 
judicious to keep the enterprise along, and if Tilton was at an}?" 
time in need personally to aid him. It was understood be- 
tween myself and Beecher that this money should go to Tilton 
as if it came from my own voluntary contributions for his ben- 
efit, and that he should not know — and he does not know until 
he reads this statement, for I do not believe he has derived it 
from airy other source — that this money came from Beecher, or 
thinks that he is in an}' way indebted to him for it. I annex 
an account of the receipt and expenditure of that sum, so far 
as it has been expended, in a paper marked " CCC : " — 
24 



554 TO THE TUNE OF 5,000. 

STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT. 
1873. 

May 2d, received $5,000 

May 3d, paid $1,000 

July 11th, paid G50 

August 15th, paid 250 

-September 12th, paid 500 

September 30th, paid 500 

December lGth, paid 200 

1874 

February 21th, paid 500 

March 30th, paid 400 

May 2d, paid 250 

May 2Gth, paid 300 

Total $4,550 

I also annex two letters of March 30th, 1874, from the pub- 
lisher of the Golden Age, which will tend to vouch the expendi- 
ture of a part of the above amount. They are marked U DDD " 
and"EEE" respectively : "— 

The Golden Age, New York, March 30th, 1874. 
[Private.] 

Dear Mr. Moulton : — We are in a tight spot. Mr. is away and 

we have no money and no paper. Can't get the latter without the former. 
We owe about $400 for paper, and the firm we have been ordering from 
refuse to let us have any more without money. Haven't any paper for 
this week's issue. Truly yours, O. W. Ruland. 

If you can do anything for us I trust you will, to help us tide over the 
chasm. 

The Golden Age, New York, March 30th, 1874. 
Dear Mr. Moulton : — I am more grateful than I can tell you for the 
noble and generous way you came to the rescue of the Golden Age this 
afternoon. Truly your friend, O. W. Ruland. 

I think proper to add, farther, that Tilton more than once 
said to me that he could and would receive nothing from Beech- 
er in the way of pecuniary assistance. I remember one special 
instance in which the subject was discussed between us. Beeeh- 
er had told me that he was willing to furnish money to pay the 
expenses of Tilton and his family in traveling abroad, in order 
that Tilton might be saved from the constant state of irrita- 



BO WEN'S HAMMER. 555 

tion which arose from the rumors he was daily hearing. I 
rather hinted at than informed Tilton of this fact, and he re- 
pelled even the intimation of such a thing with the utmost in- 
dignation and anger. Therefore I only undertook the disburse- 
ment of this sum at the most earnest and voluntary request of 
Beecher. 

As I have brought before the committee the somewhat colla- 
teral matter of the letters of Mrs. Woodhull to Beecher to in- 
fluence him into the support of her doctrines and herself soci- 
ally, which I thought but just to him, it seems but equally just 
that I should make as a part of my statement a letter, that 
came into my possession at the time it was written, from Tilton 
to a friend in the West — and not for the purpose of publication 
— explaining his position in regard to Mrs. Woodhull and the 
injurious publication made against him and his family and Mr. 
Beecher. This letter I here produce, marked "FFF 1 : " — 

No. 174 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, Dec. 31st, 1872. 

My Dear Friend : — I owe you along letter. I am unwell and a prisoner 
in the house, leaning back in leather-cushioned idleness and writing on my 
chair board before the fire. Perhaps you wonder that I have a fire, or 
anything but a hearthstone broken and crumbled, since the world has been 
told that my household is in ruins. And yet it is more like your last letter 
— brimful of love and wit and sparkling like a fountain in midwinter. 

Nevertheless you are right. I am in trouble, and I hardly see a path, 
out of it, 

It is just two years ago to-day — this very day, the last of the year — that 
Mr. Bowen lifted his hammer, and with an unjust blow smote asunder my 
two contracts — one with the Independe7it and the other with the Brooklyn 
Union. The public little suspects that this act of his turned on his fear to 
meet the consequences of horrible charges which he made against Henry 
"Ward Beecher. I have kept quiet on the subject for two years through an 
unwillingness to harm others, even for the sake of righting myself before 
the public. But, having trusted to time for my vindication I find that time 
has only thickened my difficulties, until these now buffet me, like a storm. 

You know that Bowen long ago paid to me the assessed pecuniary dam- 
ages which grew out of his breaking of the contracts, and gave me a 
written vindication of my course, and something like an apology for his. 
This settlement, so far as I am concerned, is final. 

But Bowen's assassinating dagger drawn against Beecher has proved as 
unable as Macbcth's to "trammel up the consequence." And the conse- 
quence is that the air of Brooklyn is rife with stories against its chief 



556 THE TONGUE CANNOT BE TAMED. 

clergyman, not growing out ©f the Woodhull scandal merely, but exhaled 
with ever fresh foulness, like mephitic vapors, from BoM r en's own charge 
against Beecher. 

Verily, the tongue is a wild beast that no man can tame, and like a wolf 
it is now seeking to devour the chief shepherd of the flock, together also 
with my own pretty lambs. 

For the last four or five weeks, or ever since I saw the Woodhull libel, 
I have hardly had a restful day ; and I frequently dream the whole thing 
over at night, waking the next morning unfit for work. 

Have you any conception of what it is to suffer the keenest possible 
injustice? If not, come and learn of me. 

To say nothing of the wrong and insult to my wife, in whose sorrow I 
have greater sorrow, I have to bear the additional indignity of being mis- 
construed by half the public and by many friends. 

For instance, it is supposed that I had a conspirator's hand in this un- 
holy business, whereas I am as innocent of it as of the Nathan murder. 

It is hinted that the libelous article was actually written by me ; whereas 
(being in the north of New Hampshire) I did not know of its existence till 
a week after it had convulsed my own city and family. My wife never 
named it in her letters to me lest it should spoil my mood for public speak- 
ing. (You know I was then toiling day and night for Mr. Greeley's sake). 

Then, too, it is the sneer of the clubs that I have degenerated into an 
apostle of free love ; whereas the whole body of my writings stands like a 
monument against this execrable theory. 

Moreover, it is charged that I am in financial and other relations with 
Mrs. Woodhull ; whereas I have not spoken to, nor met, nor seen her for 
nearly a year. 

The history of my acquaintance with her is this : — In the spring of 1871, 
a few months after Bowen charged Beecher with the most hideous crime 
known to human nature, and had slammed the door of the Independent in 
my face, and when I was toiling like Hercules to keep the scandal from 
the public, then it was that Mrs. Woodhull, hitherto a stranger to me, 
suddenly sent for me and poured into my. ears, not the Bowen scandal, but 
a new one of her own — namely, almost the same identical tale which she 
printed a few weeks ago. Think of it ! When I was doing my best to 
suppress one earthquake Mrs. Woodhull suddenly stood before me por- 
tentous with another. What was I to do? I resolved at all hazards to 
keep back the new avalanche until I could securely tie up the original 
storm. My fear was that she would, publish what she told to me, and, to 
prevent tins catastrophe, I resolved (and, as the result proves, like a fool, 
and yet with a fool's innocent and pure motive) to make her such a friend 
of mine that she would never think of doing me such a harm. So I 



UNRA VML MY SKEIN. 557 

rendered her some important services (including especially some labors of 
pen and ink), all with a view to put and hold her under an obligation to me 
and mine. 

In so acting toward her I found to my glad surprise and astonishment 
that she rose almost as high in my estimation as she had done with Lu- 
cretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and other 
excellent women. Nobody who has not met Mrs. "Woodhull can have an 
adequate idea of the admirable impression which she is capable of pro- 
ducing on serious persons. Moreover, I felt that the current denuncia- 
tions against her were outrageously unjust, and that, like myself, she had 
been put in a false position before the public, and I sympathized keenly 
with the aggravation of spirit which this produces. This fact lent a zeal 
to all I said in her defence. 

Nor was it until after I had known her for a number of months, and 
when I discovered her purposes to libel a dozen representative women of 
the suffrage movement, that I suddenly opened my eyes to her real ten- 
dencies to mischief; and then it was that I indignantly repudiated her 
acquaintance, and have never seen her since. 
Hence her late tirade. 

Well, it is over, and /am left to be the chief sufferer in the public 
estimation. 

What to do in the emergency (which is not clearing, but clouding itself 
daily) I have not yet decided. 

What I could do would be to take from my writing desk and publish 
to-morrow morning the prepared narrative and vindication, which, with 
facts and documents, my legal advisers pronounce complete. 

This would explain and clarify everything, both great and small (in- 
cluding the Woodhull episode, which is but a minor part of the whole 
case) ; but if I publish it I must not only violate a kind of honorable 
obligation to be silent, which I had voluntarily imposed upon myself, but I 
must put my old friend Bowen to a serious risk of being smitten dead by 
Beecher's hand. 

How far Bowen would deserve his fate I cannot say, but I know that all 
Plymouth Church would hunt him as a rat. 

Well, perhaps the future will unravel my skein for me without my own 
hand ; but whatever happens to my weather-beaten self, I wish to you, 
prosperous comrade, a happy New Year. Fraternally yours, 

Theodore Tilton. 
P. S. — Before sending this long letter (which pays my debt to you) I 
have read it to my wife, who desires to supplement it by sending her love 
and good will to the little white cottage and its little red cheeks. 

The first intimation of the insanit}- of Tilton arose in this 



558 MEDIUMISTIG FITS. 

wise : — Prior to Sunday, March 29th, 1874, a publication was 
made of a statement by a reporter of the Brooklyn Union pur- 
porting to be the result of an interview with Mr. Thomas G. 
Shearman, clerk of Ptymouth church, to the effect — I quote from 
memory — that Tilton was insane, and that he stated that Mrs. 
Tilton had mediumistic fits — whatever disease that may be- 
in which she had stated matters affecting the character of 
-Beecher, and to the statement of neither of them, for that 
reason, was any credit to be given. This publication, as it 
tended not only to excite Tilton to a defence of his sanity, but 
also, as coming from the clerk of Plymouth Church, might be 
supposed to be an authoritative expression of its pastor, annoj^ed 
Beecher very much, and he wrote the following letter, marked 
" FFF 2," which I herewith produce : — 

Sunday Night, March 29th, 1874. 

My Dear Frank : — Is there to be no end of trouble? Is wave to follow 
wave in endless succession? I was cut to the heart when C. showed me 
that shameful paragraph from the Union. Its cruelty is beyond descrip- 
tion. I felt like lying down and saying, "I am tired —tired— tired of 
living, or of trying to resist the devil of mischief." I would rather have 
had a javelin launched against me a hundred times than against those that 
have suffered so much. The shameful indelicacy of bringing the most 
sacred relations into such publicity fills me with horror. 

But there are some slight alleviations. The paragraph came when the 
public mind was engaged with the council and with Theodore's letters. I 
hope it will pass without further notice. If it is not taken up by other 
papers it will sink out of sight and be forgotten ; whereas, if it be assailed, 
it may give it a conspicuity that it never would have had. But 1 shall 
write Shearman a letter and give him my full feeling about it. I must 
again [be] ; as I have heretofore been, indebted to you for a judicious 
council on this new and flagrant element. My innermost soul longs for 
peace ; and if that cannot be, for death, that will bring peace. My fervent 
hope is that this drop of gall may sink through out of sight and not prove 
a mortal poison. Yours ever, H. W. Beechkr. 

I have written strongly to Shearman and hope that he will send a letter 
to T. unsolicited. I am sick, head, heart and body, but must move on ! 
I feel this morning like letting things go by the run. 

The letter of retraction, as proposed \>y Tilton, not being 
forthcoming, I felt it my duty, in his interest, to take such 
measures as should result in an apology from Shearman to 
Tilton. I accordingly carried to him a copy of the paper having 



SHEARMAN AND TILTON. 559 

the article, and laid it upon his desk in his office, and said to 
him that if the statements in this article were not actually 
made by him he ought to retract them. Although it lay on his 
desk he said to me that he had not seen the article and did not 
mean to see it. I told him that he must see it, and if it was 
not true that he must sa} r so. He said he didn't want to read 
it and wouldn't read it. I then left him. Afterwards I saw 
Tilton and told him what I had done, and he said, " we will go 
up together," which we did, and met Mr. Shearman. Mr. Til- 
ton called his attention to the statement in the Brooklyn Union 
as having come from him (Shearman), concerning himself and 
his wife, that one was crazy and the other subject to medium is- 
tic fits. Said he, "Mr. Sherman, this is untrue, and if you are 
not correctly reported your simple dut}'is to say so ; and if you 
have made such a statement I demand that you retract and 
apologize. If } t ou do not, I shall hold you responsible in any 
waj' I can for such injurious statement." Shearman then read 
the paragraph in the Union, and made an explanation in this 
wise : — That he might probably have repeated to somebodj- a 
story which Tilton had told him of the mediumistic states of 
Mrs. Woodhull, and perhaps have made the mistake of using 
Mrs. Tilton's name instead of Mrs. Woodhull's. Tilton said to 
him, "Mr. Shearman, you know that 3'ou are deliberately utter- 
ing falsehoods, and I won't allow you to think even that 3*011 
can deceive me by such a statement as } t ou are making now. 
You must make such an explanation of this statement in the 
Union as shall be satisfactoiy to me, or, as I said before, I shall 
hold you responsible." During the first part of the conversa- 
tion Mr. Shearman called in a witness from his outer office, but 
when the conversation became earnest and Tilton began charg- 
ing him w T ith an untruth, Shearman bid the witness retire, which 
he did. Tilton and I then left the office. 

Within a few days of this interview Tilton procured the affi- 
davit of the reporter of the Union that the statement that Shear- 
man had been reported as making he did, in fact, make. On, 
March 20th Shearman sent to me, for delivery to Tilton, a note 
of which I produce a cop}* under that date, marked " GGG," 
The original was delivered up to Shearman afterwards : — 

Brooklyn, March 30th, 1874. 
Dear Sir : — My attention has been called to a newspaper paragraph 
which I have not seen, but which I am told is to the effect that I stated to 
a reporter that you had described Mrs. Tilton as having, in a mediuniistic 



560 ME HJJMBL Y RETRACTS. 

or clairvoyant state, made some extraordinary statements of a painful 
nature. 

I have for some years past made it a rule never to send corrections to 
newspapers of anything relating to myself, no matter how erroneous such 
statements may be. 

But I have no objection to saying to you personally that this story, if 
correctly quoted here, appears to be an erroneous version of the one and 
only statement which I had from you over a year ago, viz., that Mrs. 
Woodhull did exactly the thing here attributed to Mrs. Tilton. 

I do not know that I ever repeated that story in the presence of any 
reporter for the paper in question, but I have done so in the presence of 
others, and I may, of course, by an unconscious mistake, have used your 
wife's name in the place of another and wholly different person. If so I 
beg that you will assure Mrs. Tilton of my great regret for such an error. 
Yours obediently, T. G. Shearman. 

When I took this note to Tilton he refused to receive it, 
saying : — " I will not receive any such note from Shearman. 
He knows it contains a falsehood and I cannot take it from him. 
You may carry it back to him." I did so, and stated to him 
Tilton's answer. Afterwards he substituted for that note an- 
other, under the date of April 2d, 1874, which is here produced, 
marked "HHH":- 

Brookltn, April 2d, 1874. 

Dea.r Sir: — Having seen a paragraph in the Brooklyn Union of Satur- 
day last containing a report of a statement alleged to have been made by 
me concerning your family and yourself, I desire to assure you that this 
report is seriously incorrect, and that I have never authorized such a 
statement. 

It is unnecessary to repeat here what I have actually said upon these 
subjects, because I am now satisfied that what I did say was erroneous, 
and that the rumors to which I gave some credit were without foundation. 
I deeply regret having been misled into an act of unintentional injustice, 
and am glad to take the earliest occasion to rectify it. 

I beg, therefore, to withdraw all that I said upon the occasion referred 
to as incorrect (although then believed by me), and to repudiate entirely 
the statement imputed to me as untrue and unjust to all parties concerned. 
Yours obediently, T. G. Shearman. 

Theodore Tilton, Esq. 

! In no part of that negotiation did Mr. Shearman suggest to 
me that there were any doubts as to Tilton's sanity, and denied 
both to me and to him that he had ever said anything to the 



B EEC HER D UMB. 5 G 1 

contrary, or that Mrs. Tilton was in any wa}^ incapacitated 
from telling the truth by reason of mediumistic fits or other 
physical disability. Shearman's action was communicated to 
Beecher; but meanwhile it had come to be spread about that 
Beecher had made a similar accusation as to the sanity of Mr. 
and Mrs. Tilton to that of Shearman. 

A member of your committee, Mr. Cleveland, communicated 
the fact to Beecher, to which Beecher made an indignant denial, 
as appears by his note to Mr. Cleveland, who communicated a 
cop\' of it to me in a note under date of April 2d, which I here 
produce, marked " III" : — 

[Copy.] 

My Dear Cleveland : — You say that I am supposed to have reported to 
some members of the council substantially the same story that is attributed 
to Shearman. 

How can any human being that knows me believe any such impossibility? 
I never opened my lips to any human being on the subject. I will defy 
any man to face me and say that by word, look or intimation I ever alluded 
to it. I have been as dumb as the dead. They that dare to say I have 
spoken of it are liars, if they mean to themselves, and the bearers of lies 
if they received it from others. 

I have a feeling too profoundly sacred to make such sacrilege possible. 

April 2d, 1874. II. W. Beecher. 

Frank Moulton, Esq. : — 

Dear Sir: — Herewith you have copy of a note received from Mr. 
Beecher respecting the matter of which it speaks. 

Not seeing you when I called this A. M., and leaving the city, I send by 
Mr. Halliday. Mr. Beecher wants to see you before or after the meeting 
this evening. Truly yours, II. M. Cleveland. 

Having retained the friendship of the principal parties to this 
controversy down to to-da} r , I have not thought it proper to 
produce herewith an}' letters that I have received from either of 
them excepting the single one exonerating me from blame and 
showing Mrs, Tilton's confidence in me, which I thought was 
due to myself to do because of the peculiar statement attributed 
to her ; nor have I produced any papers or proposals for a 
settlement of this controversy since it has broken out afresh 
and since the publication of Tilton's letter to Dr. Bacon and 
the call of Beecher for a committee ; nor have I since then fur- 
nished to either party, although called upon by both, any docu- 
ments in my posession that one might use the same against the 
other. I have endeavored to hold myself strictly as a mediator 
24* 



562 BEECHER'S LAST TO FRANK. 

between them, and my endeavor has been, even down to the 
veiy latest hour, to have all the scandals arising out of the pub- 
lication of the facts of their controversies and wrongs buried 
out of sight, deeming it best that it should be so done, not only 
for the good of the parties concerned and their families, but that 
of the community at large. 

If any evidence were needed that, in the interest of the par- 
ties, and especially of Beecher, I was endeavoring to the latest 
hour to prevent the publication of all these documents and this 
testimoirv, and that I retained the confidence of at least one of 
the parties in that endeavor, I produce a letter of July 13th, 1874, 
being a note arranging a meeting between uryself and Beecher 
in regard to this controversy. It is marked, " JJJ" : — 

July 13th, 1874. 
My Dear Frank : — I will be with you at seven, or a little before. I am 
ashamed to put a straw more upon you, and have but a single consolation 
— that the matter cannot distress you long, as it must soon end — that is, 
there will be no more anxiety about the future, whatever regrets there 
may be for the past. Truly yours and ever, H. W. Beecher. 

If there is any paper or fact supposed by either of the parties, 
or by the committee, to be in my posession which will throw 
any further light upon the subject of your inquiry, I shall be 
most willing to produce it if I have it, although I do not believe 
that there is any such ; and I am ready to answer airy proper 
question which shall be put to me in the way of cross-examina- 
tion by any of the parties concerned or their counsel, as fully 
as my memory or any data I have will serve, so that all the 
facts maybe known ; for, if any part of them be known, I deem 
it but just to truth and right that all should be known. As, 
however, controversy has alread}* arisen as to the correctness 
of the reports of evidence taken before the committe, I must ask 
leave, if any cross-examination is to be had orally, to be ac- 
companied by my own stenographer, who shall take down the 
evidence I may give as a necessar}' measure for my own pro- 
tection. 

Leaving to your committee, without comment, the facts and 
documents herewith presented, I have the honor to remain, 
yours, truly, Francis D. Moult on. 

Before closing this compilation, however, justice to the com- 
mittee and the reader requires that the conclusions of the jury 
of inquiry should be embodied. Discarding the studied argu- 



COMMITTEE'S CONCLUSION. 5G3 

ment used to justify their verdict of " not guilt}*," as too ab- 
surd, the gist of the report is given in the verdict attached to 
the document that will ever stand as a reproach to its authors : — 
First — We find from the evidence that the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher did not commit adultery with Mrs. Elizabeth R. Til- 
ton, either at the time or times, place or places set forth in the 
third and fourth subdivisions of Mr. Tilton's statement, nor at 
anv other time or place whatever. 

Second — We find from the evidence that Mr. Beecher has 
never committed airy unchaste or improper act with Mrs. Til- 
ton, nor made airy unchaste or improper remarks, proffer or 
solicitation to her of any kind or description whatever. 

Tliird — If this were a question of errors of judgment on the 
part of Mr. Beecher it would be eas}* to criticise, especially in 
the light of recent events. In such criticism, even to the extent 
of regrets and censure, we are sure no man would join more 
sincerely than Mr. Beecher himself. 

Fourth — We find nothing whatever in the evidence that 
should impair the perfect confidence of Plymouth church or the 
world in the Christian character and integrity of Henry Ward 
Beecher. 

And now let the peace of God that passeth all understand- 
ing rest and abide with Plymouth church and her beloved emi- 
nent pastor, so much and so long afflicted. 

HENRY W. SAGE, 

AUGUSTUS STORRS, 

HENRY M. CLEVELAND, 

HORACE B. CLAFLIN, f Investigation. 

JOHN WINSLOW, | 

S. V. WHITE, J 

Dated Brooklyn, August 27th, 1874. 



Committee of 



Several da}*s passed after the publication of Mr. Moulton's 
statement before the committee appointed by Mr. Beecher 
made their official report. The public, however, had come to 
understand just what it would be, from a " brief" supplied to the 



5 64: A SAGE CONCL USIOJST. 

Herald and telegraphed over the country. This report was as 
expected a vindication of Mr. Beecher, or as many journals, 
and a large part of the communit}' styled it " whitewash." The 
document was a cunningly worded legal argument in which 
the authors sought to render the entire evidence of the prosecu- 
tor and his witnesses useless, inasmuch as a part of this evi- 
dence had been impeached by Bessie Turner, and other wit- 
nesses for the defence. The committee came to the Sage 
conclusion that if the prosecution was "tipped up" on a 
few points their entire charges must fail, and hence Mr. 
Beecher was vindicated (?) by a committee of Ms own choice, 
composed of gentlemen who had a pecuniary interest in Ply- 
mouth church, as Mr. Samuel Wilkeson — according to Mrs. 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton — had in "The Life of Christ," that he 
feared, " would be knocked higher than a kite." The compiler 
does not consider the report of this committee of sufficient im- 
portance to embody in this work. He may, however, be per- 
mitted to say that with every desire to fill the position of an 
impartial historian, he can but regret that the gentlemen who 
have conducted the inquiry should resort to the " pettifogging " 
mode of trying the ivitnesses for the prosecution rather than the 
accused. Mr. Tilton made specific charges, reduced them to 
writing, and made affidavit to them in legal form. Mr. Moul- 
ton sustained Mr. Tilton's most damaging charges, and supple- 
mented his testimony with letters of a most damaging charac- 
ter, that, critically examined, gave force to the charges. No 
effort was made by the committee and its tricky legal advisers 
to prove these letter forgeries ; no attempt was made to have 
Mr. Tilton indicted for perjury. The policy of this biased 
committee apparently was to paint Mr. Beecher as a pure and 
spotless minister, by blackmailing the character of every per- 
son who had been known to have given currency to the reputed 
crimes of the pastor. These " chivalrous " gentlemen in their 
desire to do their work well had the exceedingly bad taste to 
stab the reputation of Miss Susan B. Anthony, whose private 



THE END THAT IS NOT AN END. 505 

character until Bessie Turner testified, stood as before the world 
as that of any wife or maiden in the city of churches. This 
despicable subterfuge was easily pierced b}' the eye of the pub- 
lic, and when Mr. Beecher's committee put it in force, the gen- 
eral exclamation, outside the Plymouth coterie was " shame ! 
shame ! " It would be a charity to throw the responsibility for 
this heartless mode of conducting the' investigation upon the 
counsel for the defence ; but the gentlemen composing the com- 
mitte are persons of intelligence, familiar with the routine of 
courts of law, and the author can find no excuse for their ac- 
tion, and hence the3 r must bear all the odium attaching to such 
irregular procedure. 

While saying this much b} r way of criticism of the committee 
the reader will please remember that the compiler still adheres 
to the neutral position he takes in the preface to this edition, 
and does not wish to give expression to airy individual opinion 
upon the guilt or innocence of Mr. Beecher. He will however, 
venture the opinion that the grosslvpartizan course pursued by 
the committee has done more to injure Mr. Beecher in the esti- 
mation of the reading public, than all the utterances of the 
Woodhull-Claflin women, and the affidavits and " gush "of Mr. 
Theodore Tilton the accomplished novelist and poet. The vin- 
dication will pass for naught and in closing a compilation, the 
object of which is to enable the reader to form conclusions of 
his own from an unbiased standpoint, the compiler will express 
the hope that the court of law, to which the inquiry now goes, 
will throw such barriers about the legal lights who figure in it, 
that will prevent the opening of the sluice gates and the free 
passage of a sea of scandal that threatens to swamp the char- 
acters of the innocent as well as the guilty. 



Since the foregoing compilation was brought to a close sup- 
plementary statements have been published by Messrs. Moul- 
ton and Tilton. Much of that made by the former gentleman 
is so very obscene that the author is compelled to pass it over 



5G6 CLOSING REMARKS. 

with the remark that the document as a whole, while very able, 
clearly convicting Mr. Beecher of misrepresentation, or willful 
falsehood, certainly exonerated Mr. Moulton from the charge 
of blackmailing the pastor. Mr. Moulton gives letters, and 
makes detailed reports of conversations with Mr. Beecher, in 
which that gentleman admitted his adultery, that if sustained 
in a court of law must result in Mr. Beecher's conviction. The 
statement of Mr. Tilton is a strong one, calculated to strengthen 
the views of those who, from reading all the evidence pro and 
con, have come to the conclusion that he is guilt}\ He clearly 
shows that the committee's report, (that until recently Tilton 
had not charged Beecher with adultery,) is untrue, and he does 
this by embocVying a copy of the speculations filed against him, 
when he was placed on trial before Plymouth Church for slan- 
dering Mr. Beecher. The third specification accuses him of 
charging Beecher with the commission of adultery. Mr. Tilton 
also quotes a letter from Mrs. Tilton to her mother (Mrs. 
Morse), in which language is used that can scarcely be con- 
strued into anything else than an admission on the part of Mrs. 
Tilton of adultery. The compiler does not believe that the 
cause of morality and religion w r ould be advanced by the repro- 
duction of these two sub-statements in full, or that it is neces- 
sar3 r for a clear understanding of the deplorable controversj' ; 
hence they are omitted in this compilation. It is probable 
that before the second edition is put to press a competent court 
of law will pass upon the case, and therefore, for the present 
this compilation is here brought to a close. 



THE END. 



.Argents "Wanted ! 

TO SELL, 

SUBSCRIPTION BOOKS 



PUBLISHED BY 



THE PARK PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

373 ASYLUM STREET, 

HARTFORD, CONN. 



FIFTY YEARS IN THE MAGIC CIRCLE. 
By Signor Blitz. 
Wonderful Feats and Tricks, with Laughable Incidents and Adventures. 
About 450 pages, 17 lull-page engravings, elegantly bound, embossed in 
black and gold. Price $2.50. 



PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

By Benson J. Lossing. 

One Royal Octavo Volume of 800 pages, with 400 engravings on wood, 

and 12 full-page steel engravings. Brought down to the close of the 

Rebellion. In both English and German. A magnificent work. Price 

bound in Cloth $5.00. 

FIELD BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR. 
By Benson J. Lossing. 
At less than half price. It is proposed to publish this, Mr. Lossing's 
greatest work, in one volume, bound in Half Turkey Morocco, at the low 
price of Ten Dollars. It will contain the entire work which has always 
been sold in half morocco at $22.50. The only difference will be, that we 
shall put it on thinner paper and in one volume. It will be the cheapest 
book ever offered to the public. It will contain about 2,000 pages, 1,800 
Engravings on wood and fourteen full-page steel Engravings, with 100 
portraits of Union Generals on Steel. The electrotype plates, wood cuts, 
&c, for this work have cost not less than $35,000. The work will be sold 
only by subscription, and bound in beautilul half Turkey morocco at $10 
per copy. 

DICTIONARY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

By Charles Lanman. 

A Book of Reference for the American People. 628 pages. Price $4.00. 

THE PARK PUBLISHING CO., Hartford, Conn. 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranbe/ry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



